US Conservation Information Strategy (US Ecoregional Rollup)Over the past decade, TNC has spent millions of dollars in undertaking some 60+ ecoregional assessments across the United States. Data and products emanating from these assessments are eagerly sought by TNCs conservation partners, providing a major strategic opportunity to influence new and existing conservation programs and practices. The opportunities continue to grow, but to date TNC has not developed a means of responding to them effectively. Data from respective assessment efforts are not standardized and cannot speak to each other or easily inform the work of TNC, conservation partners, and conservation projects at scales above the individual ecoregion. As a consequence, important conservation opportunities have been missed and the major organizational investment has been inadequately leveraged. The US Conservation Information Strategy is designed to resolve these data issues to build a seemless, national, geospatial set of ecoregional data for use in driving and informing conservation strategies at multiple scales.
Project Description
The US Conservation Information Strategy is a 2-year project designed to leverage TNCs $20 million investment in ecoregional assessments by aggregating data nationally to inform existing and future federal-, state- and NGO-led conservation opportunities at local to the national scale. This project goes far beyond a simple map of our combined ecoregional portfolios to the data itself, which is truly needed by TNC and our conservation partners to inform and drive our respective conservation actions.
This will be achieved by:
1) Defining a Compelling Conservation Vision
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Developing common classification systems for priority data fields so that national aggregations of data can occur across ecoregions.
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Aggregating data from all completed US ecoregional assessments (both tabular and spatial).
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Delivering ecoregional assessment data to Conservancy staff and key conservation partners and stakeholders to inform conservation action at local-national scales.
2) Expanding our Conservation Impact
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Identifying and engaging in priority national- and regional-scale conservation opportunities as a way to achieve real conservation impact while resolving data issues associated with aggregation.
3) Raising the Global Funding Commitment
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Delivering the outcomes of the project to inform strategic public policy actions and grow funding from private and public sources (state and national) for US conservation work.
Process
The US Conservation Information Strategy project has 2-year duration where data issues will be resolved and project value demonstrated through direct application toward real conservation opportunities via point projects.
Phase 1 (FY07-FY08) - focus on strategic delivery to high-profile, high-impact point projects at national and regional scales. Point projects will be strategically selected based on their role in achieving measurable progress toward the project goal, but also demonstrate value tied to specific conservation opportunities. Three point projects have been selected for the first phase of this project, including:
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National Fish Habitat Action Plan - a national-scale project focusing on freshwater and marine biodiversity
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Rocky Mountain Region/USFS Region 3 - a rollup of terrestrial and freshwater data for states covering the Rocky Mountain region and US Forest Service Region 3 in the western US
Phase 2 (FY08) - focus on building off of point project results to complete aggregation of ecoregional assessment biodiversity data (site, target, and target attributes).
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