BLM REA COP 2010 TNC Conservation Areas

This geodatabase contains geographic and tabular information pertaining to priority conservation areas in western North America. The region encompasses a sequence of mountain ranges, including the Rocky Mountains, that form the backbone or spine of the western North America, along with the surrounding deserts and semi-arid lands. Priority conservation areas (hereafter referred to as conservation areas) are geographic areas that have been selected because of the sensitive biological species, habitats, and features (hereafter referred to as targets) that are known to occur in these areas. Conservation, protection, and management actions within these areas should be prioritized in order to ensure persistence and survival of these sensitive biological features. The geodatabase is designed for use by the public and third-parties to conduct cross-boundary analyses of conservation priorities across the region. Target taxonomy and geographic boundaries have been reconciled and standarized. Summary attributes for conducting cross-boundary analyses include several target counts by conservation areas (e.g. number of targets, number of endemic targets, number of aquatic targets per conservation area, etc.), and several standard conservation status (NatureServe conservation status, US Endangered Species Act Status), taxonomic group, distribution, and habitat attributes for targets. The information in the geodatabase was standardized and aggregated from nineteen ecoregional assessments conducted by The Nature Conservancy and multiple partner organizations from 1999-2006. Originally defined by the US Forest Service and later refined by The Nature Conservancy, these ecoregions are: Northern Great Plains Steppe, Black Hills, Middle Rockies and Blue Mountains, Utah-Wyoming Rocky Mountains, Wyoming Basins, Great Basin, Utah High Plateaus, Southern Rocky Mountains, Central Shortgrass Prairie, Mojave Desert, Colorado Plateau, Arizona-New Mexico Mountains, Sonoran Desert, Apache Highlands, Chihuahuan Desert, Canadian Rocky Mountains, Southern Shortgrass Prairie, Columbia Plateau, and the Fescue Mixed Grass Prairie (Montana portion only). Conservation areas and targets were selected according to a ecoregional conservation planning framework developed by The Nature Conservancy, called "Conservation by Design" (available on http://conserveonline.org). There were multiple primary sources of information regarding the status and location of target species, communities and ecological systems, including NatureServe and its network of natural heritage programs, the GAP Analysis Program, and numerous other data sets from universities, public government agencies, and private conservation organizations. See the document "Ecoregion-based Conservation Assessments of the Southwestern United States and Northwestern Mexico" for a detailed description of the intent of the assessment process in general and the utility of the geodatabase in particular (available for download at http://azconservation.org/ecoregions.htm). Also, see the associated document "Schema_Priority_Conservation_Areas_Western_North_America_v1.doc" for details on the geodatabase's structure and system of relationships. The geodatabase is designed as a normalized personal geodatabase in MS Access format. It was also designed to be modular to facilitate use by multiple users and use with external third-party data sets. The geodatabase is derived from a larger geodatabase that also contains information from the original or source published ecoregional assessments. This data represents a snapshot in time from the timeperiod the REA was conducted. This data may have been updated by the originator and requests for the most current data should be directed to The Nature Conservancy in Arizona.