Conservation in a Highly Fragmented Landscape: The Central Tallgrass Prairie Ecoregional Conservation Plan January 2000 Prepared by: The Central Tallgrass Prairie Ecoregion Planning Team Table of Contents Conservation in a Highly Fragmented Landscape: .................................................2 1. The Place and Its People.....................................................................................2 1.1 Overview of the Ecoregion..........................................................................................................2 1.1.1 Grand Prairies .....................................................................................................................3 1.1.2 Great Rivers........................................................................................................................3 1.1.3 Amber Waves of Grain.........................................................................................................4 1.2 Human Context..........................................................................................................................6 2. Building a Foundation for Conservation Design .................................................7 2.1 Planning Teams.........................................................................................................................7 2.2 Planning Process.......................................................................................................................7 2.3 Planning Data and Guidelines.....................................................................................................8 2.3.1 Conservation Targets...........................................................................................................8 2.3.2 Viability Guidelines...............................................................................................................9 2.3.3 Conservation Goals............................................................................................................10 2.4 Site Selection ..........................................................................................................................11 3. Designing an Ecoregional Plan at Multiple Geographic Scales.........................12 3.1 A Brief History of Ecoregional Planning and Concepts of Geographic Scale.................................12 3.2 The Concept of Functional Systems..........................................................................................13 3.3.1 Functional Sites .................................................................................................................15 3.3.2 Functional Landscapes.......................................................................................................15 3.3.3 Functional Networks...........................................................................................................15 4. Central Tallgrass Prairie Conservation Design .................................................16 4.1 Evaluating the Design ..............................................................................................................16 4.1.1 Imperiled Communities.......................................................................................................16 4.1.2 Threats Assessment ..........................................................................................................20 4.1.3 Biodiversity Rating.............................................................................................................21 4.1.4 Managed Areas Status.......................................................................................................23 4.2 Identifying Priorities..................................................................................................................24 5. From Planning to Practice.................................................................................29 5.1 Implementation Strategies ........................................................................................................29 5.1.1 Multi-site Threat Abatement Strategies................................................................................29 5.1.2 Overall Implementation Strategies.......................................................................................29 5.2 Restoration as a Key Strategy for Conservation in the CTP Ecoregion.........................................30 5.2.1 Identifying Restoration Sites ...............................................................................................30 5.2.2 The Contribution of Landscape Restoration Sites to the Central Tallgrass Prairie Plan ...........31 5.2.3 Establishing Ecoregional Priorities for Conservation .............................................................31 5.3 Communication Plan................................................................................................................34 5.3.1 General recommendations for all of the communication tools................................................34 5.3.2 Communicating with the Internal Audience ..........................................................................34 5.3.3 Communicating with the External Audience.........................................................................34 5.4 On-going Maintenance.............................................................................................................35 5.4.1 Site Selection Advisory Team.............................................................................................35 5.4.2 Assessment and Design Team meeting timeframe and purpose............................................35 5.5 Second Iteration of the Plan......................................................................................................35 5.6 Data Gaps...............................................................................................................................35 5.7 Lessons Learned.....................................................................................................................36 5.7.1 Process Lessons ...............................................................................................................36 5.7.2 Design Lessons .................................................................................................................37 5.7.3 Assessment Lessons .........................................................................................................36 6. Acknowledgements...........................................................................................38 Appendices...........................................................................................................39 Central Tallgrass Prairie Ecoregional Conservation Plan, page 1/39 Conservation in a Highly Fragmented Landscape: The Central Tallgrass Prairie Ecoregional Conservation Plan With the adoption of Conservation by Design in 1995, The Nature Conservancy recognized the importance of working at larger scales to achieve our mission which is: the long-term survival of all viable native species and community types through the design and conservation of portfolios of sites within ecoregions. The Conservancy set forth to design conservation plans on an ecoregional basis by working closely with various conservation partners. These plans are intended to provide a framework within which the Conservancy and our partners, such as the Natural Heritage Programs, can make decisions regarding conservation actions to be taken at the local level, confident in the knowledge that site by site activities in ecoregions are not isolated but part of a larger, coherent design. The highly fragmented nature of the Central Tallgrass Prairie (CTP) Ecoregion presented certain challenges for the Planning Team. How do Definitions you meet a goal of providing for the long-term viability of all native Ecoregion: a relatively large unit species and communities when large-scale natural landscapes account of land and water defined by the for such a small percentage of the region? How does The Nature influences of shared climate Conservancy achieve mission success in an area where the remaining and geology, the main factors natural areas are often isolated from one another by miles of agricultural determining the distribution of fields and are typically degraded by the threats imposed on them through plants and animals in the area. fragmentation and detrimental land use practices? Portfolio: the suite of sites within an ecoregion that would One of the clear messages the planning team would like the reader to collectively conserve the native walk away with is that the conservation situation in the Central Tallgrass species and community types Prairie Ecoregion is desperate. The vast majority of the landscape has found in that ecoregion. been converted to agricultural uses. Less than 5% of the ecoregion is Viability: the ability of a species considered “untilled” or “intact” from an ecological perspective. Few or community to persist over areas remain that retain some vestige of the natural communities that time. once dominated the landscape, and these remnants are typically under Natural Heritage Program/ great stress either from adjacent incompatible land uses, invasive Conservation Data Centers: species, fire suppression, hydrologic alterations, or other threats. We State, regional, and/or national cannot afford to lose any more of our natural heritage, and, in fact, there programs that develop and is a great need to restore some of the most