{ "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": "

Research and Monitor COA<\/SPAN><\/SPAN><\/P>

Data included:<\/SPAN><\/SPAN> For the Research and Monitoring COA, the goal is to assess the status of, the need for, and response to management for species and habitats. The ecological data used habitat suitability maps based on the best available data for 14 species of greatest conservation need (SGCN), key habitat maps, and the Natural Diversity Database (NDDB) Review Areas. 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. The key habitats included open upland, forested upland, estuarine, palustrine, land water interface, lacustrine, and riverine. The key habitat maps were compiled from existing geospatial data including the <\/SPAN>NOAA 1 m Coastal Change Analysis Program Landcover Data<\/SPAN><\/A>, <\/SPAN>Connecticut Young Forest and Shrubland Habitat Map<\/SPAN><\/A>, <\/SPAN>USGS National Hydrography Dataset Plus<\/SPAN><\/A>, <\/SPAN>Connecticut Hydrography Set<\/SPAN><\/A>, and <\/SPAN>Connecticut and Vicinity Town Boundary Set<\/SPAN><\/A>. The <\/SPAN>Natural Diversity Database (NDDB) Areas<\/SPAN><\/A> are created for all state listed species and species of special concern and include potential suitable habitat and dispersal buffers. These maps are not specific to SGCN, where they are not maps of SGCN only, but are more specific areas of state listed endangered, threatened, and species of special concern. The NDDB Review Areas map was categorized into the low (1-2 species), medium (3-6 species), and high (≥ 7 species) number of overlapping layers for state threatened and endangered species, and species of special concern, based on the natural breaks in the data. The NDDB areas for SGCN already included in the SGCN mapping process were removed to avoid overrepresenting species.<\/SPAN><\/SPAN><\/P>

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

Spatial prioritization:<\/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. The layers were all given an equal positive weight at 1.0, except for the NDDB layer, which was given a weight of 21.0 to equal the total weight of all the 14 SGCN and 7 key habitat maps. To generate the Research and Monitor COA, the values above 0.80 or top 20% of values from Zonation were extracted. <\/SPAN><\/P>

Potential uses:<\/SPAN> Partners can use this map to either target areas with a high number of overlapping species of concern and suitable habitats or to identify areas that have not been surveyed recently. This map can help identify potential locations for research and monitoring of SGCN and state listed species or species of concern. <\/SPAN><\/P>

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