{ "culture": "en-US", "name": "", "guid": "", "catalogPath": "", "snippet": "The 2025 Connecticut State Wildlife Action Plan conservation opportunity areas (COAs) represent locations partners can conduct actions to benefit wildlife populations and habitats and achieve State Wildlife Action Plan Goals. There are 7 total COAs that represent broad actions: protect, connect, restore, manage, partner, inform, and research and monitor. This effort combined ecological and social data in a spatial prioritization software called Zonation to identify priority areas that reflect the 7 actions. Each COA has different ecological and/or social data included to reflect its unique goal.", "description": "

Restore COA<\/SPAN><\/SPAN><\/P>

Data included:<\/SPAN><\/SPAN> The goal of the Restore COA is to restore desired conditions, communities or populations, including restoration of structure, function, and processes. The ecological data used habitat suitability maps based on the best available data for 14 species of greatest conservation need (SGCN). The 14 species modeled were American oystercatcher (<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>Haematopus palliatus<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>), eastern whip-poor-will (<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>Antrostomus vociferus<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>), bridle shiner (<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>Notropis bifrenatus<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>), brook trout (<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>Salvelinus fontinalis<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>), eastern hog-nosed snake (<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>Heterodon platirhinos<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>), ribbonsnake (<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>Thamnophis saurita saurita<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>), spotted turtle (<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>Clemmys guttata<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>), wood turtle (<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>Glyptemys insculpta<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>), eastern pondmussel (<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>Ligumia nasuta<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>), frosted elfin (<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>Callophrys irus<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>), tiger spiketail (<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>Cordulegaster erronea<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>), yellow-banded bumble bee (<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>Bombus terricola<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>), New England cottontail (<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>Sylvilagus transitionalis<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>), and tricolored bat (<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>Perimyotis subflavus<\/SPAN><\/SPAN>). These 14 species represent one or more key habitats and/or a taxonomic group. For the Restore COA, the top 50-75% of habitat suitability values were extracted from each of the 14 SGCN maps. <\/SPAN><\/SPAN><\/P>

View the full methods for all COAs in Appendix 4.6 in the <\/SPAN><\/SPAN>2025 CT State Wildlife Action Plan<\/SPAN><\/SPAN><\/A>. <\/SPAN><\/SPAN><\/P>

Spatial Prioritization:<\/SPAN><\/SPAN> Zonation software iteratively ranks each pixel in a 10.0 m resolution grid of Connecticut for its conservation value and gives each cell a score based on that ranking, prioritizing areas with a high density of layers, balance between layers, and minimizing conservation loss. Rank values range from 0-1, with 1 having the highest conservation value and 0 having the lowest. Each layer is given a relative weight based on its importance compared to the other layers used, where a positive higher weight makes that layer a higher conservation priority compared to the other layers. Each of the 14 SGCN maps were given an equal positive weight of 1.0 in Zonation. The values above 0.80 or top 20% of values were extracted to generate the Restore COA. <\/SPAN><\/SPAN><\/P>

Potential uses:<\/SPAN><\/SPAN> Partners interested in habitat restoration for SGCN may use this COA. <\/SPAN><\/SPAN><\/P>

Recommended actions (example actions):<\/SPAN><\/SPAN><\/P>