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Strategic Habitat Conservation

Strategic Habitat Conservation - The SHC Framework

The Strategic Habitat Conservation (SHC) framework is a specific "Adaptive Management" model. It is an iterative process with a focus on making management decisions about where and how to deliver conservation. By pursuing explicit objectives for our trust resources, we end up "doing the right things in the right places".

The SHC cycle is comprised of 5 elements as illustrated in the figure to the right.

1. Biological planning:

• Building models of population-habitat relationships for focal species.

2. Conservation Design:

• Developing spatially-explicit descriptions of desired habitat conditions based on the results and products of Biological Planning. This may include designation of priority areas for a particular management practice like grassland restoration or reforestation and/or quantified habitat objectives by type, size, and configuration.

3. Conservation Delivery:

• Doing the right things in the right places to efficiently attain our objectives represents the essence of SHC. Actions include acquiring easements or fee-title tracts, or implementing management on private lands, within priority areas identified through SHC biological planning and conservation design.

4. Outcome-based monitoring:

• Hiring seasonal staff to collect data to evaluate site-scale management outcomes or to build long-term data bases on how focal species are distributed across habitats and landscapes.

5. Assumption-driven Research:

• Evaluating a key assumption in a biological model used for biological planning, e.g., metapopulation extinction rates exceed expected colonization rates for an endangered salamander species in landscapes where wetland density is < 3/km².