Recovery Plans Search | Recovery On-Line Activity Reporting (ROAR) Public Reports | Frequently Asked Questions
1. How do I get information on a particular species?
A wide range of information for threatened, endangered, candidate, and other at risk species is available at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) is available here on this website.
In the upper left hand corner of each page of our website, above the main navigation bar, there is a search field. Type in the name of the species you are interested in (or part of a name, like “butterfly”), make sure the "Species" radio button is selected, and click the “Search” button. On the next page, you will see a list of all the species that match your search criteria. In that list, the species’ scientific name will be underlined and clickable. Click on the name of the species you want, and the next page will bring you to a “Species Profile” page, where you can find information on taxonomy, appearance, range, listing status, and other information under the topical headings of Federal Register Documents, Recovery, Critical Habitat, Conservation Plans, Petitions, Life History, and Other Resources. Each species’ profile is set up using the same format, but the amount of information for each species varies.
This website also provides information about, and links to, our Candidate Conservation, Listing, Consultation, and Recovery programs and the policies and tools we use to work with our partners to conserve and recover at-risk and listed species. While you are exploring our website, be sure to check out the links for Homework Help, Endangered Species Bulletin, and Partnerships in Conservation.
2. What recovery actions are being implemented for a particular species?
The Service works with our partners to develop and implement recovery plans that help increase species’ populations and manage the threats to their existence. Recovery plans identify site specific management actions that, if completed, could lead to reclassification to a less critical status or help them recover to the point they can be removed from Endangered Species Act protection. You can see a description of a species’ recovery actions and the status of implementing those actions in two ways.
The first way to find this information is to look at the recovery section of a Species Profile page (as described above in question 1). If a species has a recovery plan (some are still being developed), the plan’s title, date, and status will be displayed in the Current Recovery Plan(s) box. Clicking the plan’s title will bring up a copy of the plan in pdf format in a separate window, where you can read all about the species’ recovery needs. You can also view the plan’s recovery action implementation status by clicking the View Implementation Progress link in the Current Recovery Plan(s) box. Clicking this link will open a separate internet browser window where you will be presented with a report with a list of recovery actions and associated information. See the export options in the top right hand corner of the report for downloading and printing. The report will also have the name and contact information for the Service’s field office responsible for implementing the plan.
The second way to find a species’ recovery plan information is to access the list of species with recovery plans directly from our website. You can view the plans in order by species’ taxonomic groups
3. How do I find out about recovery activities that I can help with?
There is a variety of information associated with each recovery plan action, including a field called “Labor Type.” Labor Type refers to how the action will be implemented. There are seven Labor Types, including “Volunteer.” To find out which species have recovery actions that can be implemented using volunteers, use our Recovery Plan Information Search query, which pulls information from all available recovery plans in our Recovery Online Activity Reporting (ROAR) database.
You can access the query from the recovery section of a Species Profile page (described above) by clicking on the blue Recovery Plan Information Search link or directly from this link: https://ecos.fws.gov/roar/pub/ConfigureRecActionReport.do?path=ROAR%20Custom%20Queries.Public%20Actions%20AdHoc
Once on the query page, you will see a list of all the fields you can use to search for information. The more fields you fill in, the narrower your results will be. To search for recovery actions from all plans that can use volunteer labor, leave all the fields blank or with their default settings as you scroll down the page until you see the Labor Type field box. Using your cursor, scroll down in the field box until you see “volunteer”; click on the word volunteer and it will turn blue to indicate that it has been selected. Continue to scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will see Display Options that allow you to customize how the results will be displayed on the report. For this search, click on the boxes to the right of the bolded “General species information” and “Recovery action information” lines, and below, in the Sorting Options box, click on Plan Title so that your report results will be grouped by actions within the same recovery plan. Finally, click the Run Report button at the very end of the page.
While your report is running, you may see a pop-up Security Information window that warns that the page contains secure and non-secure items and asks if you wish to display the non-secure items; click the yes button. The search results will be displayed on screen. At the top of the screen, you will see your search criteria and how many items meet those criteria and the number of pages those items are displayed. You will also see in the upper right hand side of the screen two options (Excel and XML) for downloading your report for ease of sorting and printing. The onscreen report will show you which plans and actions have been designated with the volunteer labor type. Each plan has a lead field office, and the contact name and phone number for that office is displayed in your report so that you can contact them for further information. Not all recovery actions have been designated with Labor Types yet. It is possible that more volunteer opportunities will be identified, so please check back to this report again in the future.
4. How do I find out which organizations are engaged in recovering species?
Each recovery plan identifies the organizations that are most likely to help us implement actions to recover species. These groups of organizations are called the plan’s “responsible parties.” To view the parties responsible for a specific recovery plan, locate the recovery plan by following the steps in Questions 1 and 2 above. Responsible parties are identified in a column with that heading in the View Implementation Progress report.
To see which plans and actions a particular organization is identified as a responsible party for, use the Recovery Plan Information Search discussed under Question 3 above. Once on the query page, scroll down until you see the Responsible Parties box. Because these are actual parties identified in hundreds of recovery plans, the box contains a very long list (several thousand names), and an organization might be entered more than once with a slightly different name (ex., Arizona State Park vs. Arizona State Park Board). It might be easier to identify your party by first clicking on the blue “View All Parties” link below the search box to bring up an exportable and printable list. Once you’ve identified your party or parties, it will be easier to find them in the search box. You can select multiple parties by holding down the Ctrl key while clicking on the party names. Once you’ve selected your parties, follow the instructions above in Question 3 for displaying and viewing your search results.
5. Who do I contact for more information about a particular species?
The Species Profile page (see Question 1 above) identifies the Lead Region at the top of the page. The Lead Region name is a clickable link that will bring you to the Regions’ webpage, which will include contact information. If you are viewing recovery plan action information using either the View Implementation Progress or Recovery Plan Information Search described in Questions 2-4 above, the contact name and phone number for the plan’s Lead Field Office are included in the reports.
Download these Frequently Asked Questions [94KB].
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