A plan for conserving California's wildlife resources while responding to environmental challenges California State Wildlife Action Plan Companion Plans Final 2015 Document Contact Please stay tuned for opportunities to engage in a comprehensive review of the California State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP) 2015, as part of the SWAP 2025 process. Overview California’s distinctive topography and climate have given rise to a remarkable diversity of habitats that support a multitude of plant and animal species. In fact, California has more species than any other state in the U.S. and also has the greatest number of species that occur nowhere else in the world. Many of the places where wildlife thrive are the same as those valued for recreation and other human activities. To ensure a sustainable future for wildlife – and the enjoyment of wildlife by generations to come – there is a need for a collaborative approach to conservation. State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP) The State Wildlife Action Plan examines the health of wildlife and prescribes actions to conserve wildlife and vital habitat before they become more rare and more costly to protect. The plan also promotes wildlife conservation while furthering responsible development and addressing the needs of a growing human population. 2015 California Wildlife Action Plan 2005 California Wildlife Action Plan The 2005 Wildlife Action Plan (PDF)(opens in new tab) was prepared for the department by the UC Davis Wildlife Health Center(opens in new tab). 2025 SWAP Revision CDFW is conducting the 10-year Revision of the California SWAP from July 2022 to October 2025. The SWAP focuses on benefits to Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN) and recommends strategies and actions to conserve California’s species and ecosystems, while recognizing the needs of a diverse, growing, and changing human population. The SWAP allows for continued access to federal funds through the State Wildlife Grant (SWG) program to help complete conservation-oriented projects in California. The 2025 Revision presents an opportunity to conduct a progress evaluation since 2015 and a scoping process for incorporating new information and lessons learned since 2015. The Revision process includes several phases as outlined below: Phase 1: Engagement of CDFW scientists and managers statewide to evaluate progress since 2015 and to conduct scoping for the 2025 Revision. Phase 2: Development of a Communication & Engagement Plan to ensure all interested parties, including California Native American Tribes, historically marginalized or otherwise underrepresented communities, as well as conservation, science, and stewardship organizations and the public are fully informed about the SWAP 2025 update and are provided opportunities to share feedback and perspectives. Phase 3: Implement 2025 SWAP Update engagement strategy with wide audiences including California Native American Tribes, historically marginalized or otherwise underrepresented communities, as well as conservation, science, and stewardship organizations and the public. Phase 4: Development of Draft SWAP 2025 Phase 5: Conducting public review of draft SWAP Update document. Phase 6: Finalization and online publication of 2025 SWAP. For more information, contact SWAP@wildlife.ca.gov Data Layers In order to work with SWAP data layers, visit https://apps.wildlife.ca.gov/bios/ and click on the “Use Public BIOS” button. Then, enter “State Wildlife Action Plan” into the “Add Data: BIOS” search box, at the top of the screen. The top two hits pertain to the GIS data for the SWAP provinces and terrestrial targets. The data for the SWAP aquatic targets can be found near the bottom of the returned search list. Clicking on any of them will open a popup box that allows users to download the GIS data and metadata. User Guidance for Prospective Grantees and Others If you have ever applied for a State Wildlife Grant, you likely needed to consider how your proposed project would address the objectives of the State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP). For those and others who wonder how their conservation projects can help implement SWAP, here are some basic guidelines: Will the project cover most of the state? If so, see whether there is alignment between the goal of the project vs. the goals listed in the chapter regarding statewide conservation strategies (PDF) (see page 4-3). OR If the project cannot be considered “statewide,” determine the ecoregion/s in which the project is to be sited. You can use this GIS map tool. (Note: this guidance applies to all but anadromous fishes, which are covered in Vol. 1, Chapter 6 (PDF).) In the tool, enter the location name (e.g., for a city, county, park, etc.) or project coordinates in the gray search box (top right-hand side of the webpage). (You could also just click around on the map, but it may be easiest to use the search function.) Then, click on the black dot that appears on the map. This will prompt the white box that appears beneath the search box to display the terrestrial and aquatic conservation unit/s, which can be viewed by clicking on the small blue arrow button that appears at the top of the white box. Make note of the SWAP province/s, which correspond to SWAP 2015 Vol. 1, Chapters 5.1-5.7, as well as the terrestrial and aquatic conservation units, which correspond to the conservation targets prioritized in SWAP 2015 for the specific province/s covering your project area. If the conservation target/s do include your target habitat or the habitat in which your target species is typically found, it is possible that SWAP 2015 does not consider it to be a major priority (“conservation strategies were fully developed only for the targets that contained the greatest number of SCGN and that were most immediately threatened”) or does not prioritize it because it is covered by another plan. (For example, for the South Coast Province (PDF), “Coastal sage scrub was not among those targets selected because this habitat type is being conserved through the Natural Community Conservation Planning (NCCP) program. By developing conservation strategies for key conservation targets that are less emphasized under the NCCP program, SWAP both builds upon and complements the NCCP program.”) In this case, check to see whether your target species is listed as SGCN in SWAP 2015 Appendix C (PDF). If it is not, SWAP 2015 acknowledges that it is “an adaptive management plan that will continually be updated, revised, and improved, based on the input and deliberations of all those involved in wildlife conservation.” It makes sense that threats to species and habitats will change over time, so you could still make a case for your project, given the latest information that has yet to be incorporated into SWAP.