Conservation issues, including threats or stressors, are human actions that adversely impact wildlife, native plants and natural communities, and the ecological processes that sustain them. Conservation actions are the measures taken to eliminate or minimize these impacts, or to mitigate their effects. While many Conservation Issues had their origins in the 2006 and 2015 DEWAPs or plans mentioned above, many were added or modified by partners and stakeholders through reviews by taxa teams and listening sessions to make them applicable to Delaware.

Starting with the issues identified in the 2015 DEWAP, the Revision Development Team converted each of the 2015 Issues and Actions Conservation Measures Partnership Classification system, using the crosswalk in the 2022 Lexicon (Crisfield and NEFWDTC 2022). Members of the Revision Development Team did an initial round of review and updates to the 2015 issues. Taxa teams were then asked to review the existing issues and actions, and provide additional threats and actions not identified by the revision development team. During the revision process, the draft list of threats and actions went out for public comment, where stakeholders and the public suggested modifications and provided additional updated information on previously unidentified threats to SGCN. Teams then grouped and condensed these issues for species suites, habitat associations, or broader taxa applicability. A similar process was conducted for identifying and updating issues at the statewide level and to each key habitat. Habitat issues were also grouped and condensed to higher tier habitat groupings whenever possible to reduce redundancy and highlight common issues. Issues that were identified to be relevant for all habitats were moved to the statewide level and removed from each individual habitat group to avoid redundancy.

Related Topics:  draft