How the Big Bend synthesis project meets U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Landscape Conservation Design guidance Document completed: April 23, 2018 Executive summary Introduction Geographic boundaries People South Atlantic Conservation Blueprint involvement Peninsular Florida Blueprint involvement Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy Blueprint involvement Purpose Process Identify desired landscape characteristics using quantifiable biological, cultural, social, and physical resource objectives Identify a shared vision of future landscape conditions that meet conservation goals Identify conservation targets and measurable objectives for those targets Evaluate the drivers that influence current and future landscape patterns Assess current and plausible future landscape conditions Analyze the ability of a landscape to support conservation targets at desirable levels under a variety of spatial and temporal scenarios Provide strategies for landscape-scale management, restoration, protection, mitigation, and monitoring to support conservation targets at desirable levels Product Spatial design Integrated design (from October 3rd Refuge Chief’s Memo) Coordinated adaptation strategy Background What success looks like What failure looks like Role of the Conservation Blueprint (i.e., Spatial Design) in the adaptation strategy Responses to specific threats Recommended actions Executive summary The Big Bend region of Florida is home to the largest undeveloped coastline in the continental United States. Its unique combination of nature-based livelihoods, high biodiversity, and rural character has led to high interest in conservation from a number of public and private organizations. This high interest has also led to significant progress in collaboratively developing a shared vision for the future of the region and associated metrics and data to track progress. At a large landscape scale, much of this recent progress has been through the South Atlantic LCC, Peninsular Florida LCC, and Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is looking to landscape conservation designs (LCDs) to ensure its efforts are part of a larger, collaboratively developed conservation strategy. Specific FWS LCD-related policies include 056 FW 1 (Climate Change Adaptation), 602 FW 5 (NWRS Strategic Growth), Land Protection Planning Interim Guidance (2016), LCD Guidance (2016), 052 FW 1 (Strategic Habitat Conservation), and 604 DM 1 (Landscape Approach). This document synthesizes existing information to demonstrate that the steps and components of an LCD, as described in national FWS policy, have been fulfilled in this region. Also, in the iterative spirit of LCD, these steps and components are being regularly updated and improved. Introduction “The Big Bend region of Florida...is a land of working forests, farms, rivers, springs, estuaries, and an extensive Gulf coastline. The people of this rural region rely more on the natural resources for their livelihood and recreation than most places in Florida. An investigation of the region’s population and economy based on secondary data and bolstered by on-site visits and interviews of local officials and state economic professionals found a region rich in the traditions of “Old Florida” but struggling to keep pace with rapid changes and growth in other areas of the state.” - ​Demographic, economic, and growth initiative analysis: Big Bend Region of Florida The Big Bend is home to the largest undeveloped coastline in the continental United States and is a globally recognized biodiversity hotspot. Its unique combination of nature-based livelihoods, high biodiversity, and rural character has led to high interest in conservation from a number of public and private organizations. This interest has also led to significant progress in collaboratively developing a shared vision for the future of the region and associated metrics and data to track progress. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) National Wildlife Refuge Systems (NWRS) strategic vision for 21st century conservation—Conserving the Future: Wildlife Refuges and the Next Generation—noted “landscape conservation is the only path forward to conserve America’s wildlife and wildlife places,” and that “our vision is to embrace a scientific, adaptive, landscape-level approach to conserving, managing, and restoring refuge lands and waters, and facilitate conservation benefits beyond our boundaries.” A cross-regional Planning Implementation Team, formed to help implement this vision, recommends that the Refuge system focus on landscape conservation designs (LCDs) developed by the greater conservation community through Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs). This document synthesizes existing information to demonstrate that the steps and components of an LCD, as described in national FWS policy, have been fulfilled in this region. There is still plenty of room for improvement and the efforts described are being regularly updated and improved over time. This effort also complements previous and ongoing work by the state of Florida to identify and protect conservation priority areas through projects including the Florida Forever Conservation Needs Assessment, Wildlife Habitat Conservation Needs in Florida: Updated Recommendations for Strategic Habitat Conservation Areas, Florida Ecological Greenways Network, and the Critical Lands and Waters Identification Project and programs including Florida Forever, Rural and Family Land Protection, and the Cooperative Conservation Blueprint. Users of this information are encouraged to use the latest version of these reference documents and data layers as they become available. Geographic boundaries The study area was the product of a several-month-long discussion among project partners, including staff from the LCCs, FWS, FWC, NWRA, and the University of Florida. These discussions included variations of potential study area boundaries ranging as far west as the Apalachicola River watershed, as far north as the Chattahoochee River watershed up to the Atlanta area, and as far east as the St. Mary’s River watershed on the border of Florida and Georgia and running to the Atlantic Ocean. After several meetings to discuss options depicted on maps, we decided to focus on the watershed core of the Big Bend region of Florida (which also includes watersheds encompassing portions of south-central and southwest Georgia) from the Ochlockonee River on the western end of the study area to the Suwannee River watershed on the eastern end of the study area. In addition, since the Big Bend is usually considered to include several smaller watersheds south of the Suwannee River, the southern boundary of the study area was extended as far south as the Waccasassa River watershed in Levy County, Florida. From the southern and easternmost extent to the western boundary, the river watersheds included in the study area include: Waccasassa, New, Sante Fe, Withlacoochee, Alapahoochee, Alapaha, Suwannee, Steinhatchee, Fenholloway, Econfina, Wacissa, Aucilla, St. Marks, Wakulla, and Ochlockonee. The study area also includes a coastal network of existing conservation lands north of Gulf Hammock Wildlife Management Area, including the Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge, Big Bend Wildlife Management Area, Econfina State Park, Aucilla Wildlife Management Area, St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, and Apalachicola National Forest. There is also a riverine network of conservation lands starting with the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge on the Georgia-Florida border south along the Suwannee River. Protecting and restoring functional ecological connectivity among and between the coastal and riverine conservation land networks is one of the important conservation goals in this study. Fig. 1. Geographic boundaries of study area. People South Atlantic Conservation Blueprint involvement The South Atlantic LCC is made up of more than 800 individuals from federal agencies, regional organizations, states, tribes, nonprofits, universities, and other groups. A Steering Committee of diverse partners governs the LCC, including representatives from 18 different organizations across the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. The FWS serves on the Steering Committee as an equal partner alongside state wildlife management agencies, other federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers, nonprofits including the Longleaf Alliance and The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and other regional groups like the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council. The South Atlantic LCC’s mission focuses on the Conservation Blueprint, a living spatial plan that prioritizes opportunities for shared action in the face of future change. Currently, more than 500 individuals from over 150 organizations across the South Atlantic have actively participated in developing and refining the Blueprint, including 121 FWS personnel. Representatives from National Wildlife Refuges (NWRs) across the Southeast account for approximately 30 percent of the FWS involvement. Other groups involved with Blueprint development include city governments, state wildlife and forestry agencies, local land trusts, tribes, historic and cultural resource organizations, universities, and other regional partnerships like the Atlantic Coast Joint Venture and the Southeast Aquatic Resources Partnership. During in-person workshops to review the spatial design and develop the accompanying coordinated adaptation strategy, some participants covered large