Actions

Conservation Actions to Address Threats

Identifying the actions necessary to address the threats facing our wildlife, plants, and habitats is the heart of the Wildlife Action Plan. By taking action to address priority threats, we have a chance to improve populations of at-risk species and keep our more common species populations healthy. This is where the rubber meets the road. Without targeted and focused efforts, we are less likely to meet the goal of delisting species and improving habitat for animals, plants, and people!

To arrive at meaningful actions, it is important that activities, events, or conditions that adversely impact certain wildlife species be recognized as threats. It is also important to understand these characterizations are relative to specific combinations of species, habitats, and/or conservation issues. Designation as a “threat” does not imply that these activities are inherently bad for wildlife or people. The characterization of activities, events, or conditions as “threats” has no derogatory intent – it simply reflects some factual association with effects on certain wildlife species or habitats.

Development of Regional Conservation Actions for Plants, Wildlife, and Their Habitats

For the 2025 Plan, NJFW, conservation stakeholders, and partners developed conservation actions targeted at addressing the priority threats facing SGCN in each of our nine regions. This effort was undertaken to focus, or help direct, users to take the most important action to address the priority threats facing our wildlife, plants, or the habitats they rely on. By taking the most important actions, based on the users’ experience or interest, we are more likely to improve the outcomes of our at-risk species and the habitats they depend on.

The process of creating priority actions was twofold. The first step was gathering experts to draft effective, achievable, and measurable actions to address the priority Threats. This was not a laundry list of actions but a set of focused, targeted actions that, if taken, would address the threat in a meaningful way. The second step was to prioritize these actions. Both steps used an iterative process of review by staff and engaged experts and were conducted at the region and state level.

Drafting Regional Conservation Actions

NJ’s experts, including NJFW staff, partners, technical stakeholders, academics, and our Technical Advisory Group members, were invited to participate in drafting conservation actions using a specific template. This helped make them consistent and, more importantly, followed a results-chain format. Using the template required actions include the how and why of the action. All actions had to be feasible, measurable, identify potential implementors, and inform success.

Draft actions were merged, reviewed, and edited. Respondents, including NJFW staff, were asked to conduct a fatal flaw review for missing critical actions.

Prioritizing Regional Conservation Actions

NJFW considers the prioritization of regional actions the most consequential step to our SWAP revision. In this step, participants were asked to further prioritize actions into two categories: important and priority. NJFW shared the characteristics that were used to determine regional priority threats to assist in the action classification. Our NJFW staff and Technical Advisory Group used a weighted score format to establish the cut-off point between “important” and “priority” actions, followed by a second round of prioritization that asked reviewers to simply agree or disagree with the priority class. The majority of those who agreed decided the final priority class.  Finally, NJFW led two regional expert in-person meetings for a fatal flaw review to finalize the classification of the actions.

Review action template, guidance and definitions HERE .

Statewide Conservation Actions

Statewide conservation actions are those actions that are best taken at the state level, such as creating regulations or programs, or across the entire state, such as addressing data gaps, research needs, and outreach campaigns. Many regional priority actions were moved to the statewide group for those reasons. Other statewide actions were gleaned from state, national, or regional plans as well as NJ’s Fish and Wildlife grants programs. Statewide actions were prioritized by NJFW staff.

CHECK OUT THE LIST OF IMPORTANT AND PRIORITY CONSERVATION ACTIONS. Use the table below to sort by region (statewide is a region). Review our REGION MAP .

Connecting Actions to Wildlife and Plants

The focus of the 2025 SWAP is addressing threats to the habitats that at-risk plants and animals require to survive and thrive. There are some species-specific threats, but the majority of threats are not directly linked to species. While the focus is on habitats, it is still important to recognize the species that are most likely to benefit from action. To connect species to actions, we created species guilds that are either associated with certain habitats or will respond to actions within a habitat. A good example is the Pollinator Guild – species in this guild, including species of bees, butterflies, and moths, will collectively respond well to actions that improve pollinator habitat. There are some guilds containing species that will not benefit equally to a specific action. One such example is the Bats Guild. Gating and protecting caves will benefit bats that overwinter in NJ, but these actions are less likely to benefit migratory bats. Assigning species into guilds is not a perfect solution but, as a whole, using guilds provides a picture of the species benefiting from the actions.

Check out the list of guilds and view their associated species below.

Future Prioritization of Conservation Actions

During the prioritization process, certain priority conservation actions were further classified as highest priority. Currently, those actions are in the Priority category. NJFW will work with staff and technical and conservation partners to refine these highest priority actions and add metrics including feasibility, potential effectiveness, and other criteria to complete their result chain metrics.

Collaboration beyond New Jersey’s Borders

Many threats to wildlife, plants, and their habitats reach beyond state boundaries, and many of the approaches to address these threats benefit from collaboration at regional and landscape scales. Tackling these threats at a larger spatial scale results in more unified, consistent, and effective actions and projects. The Northeastern states have worked together for years and have a culture of cooperation. The Northeast Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies supports a strong technical committee structure to further wildlife conservation. The Northeast Fish and Wildlife Diversity Technical Committee (NEFWDTC ) works to foster communication of ideas, promote necessary research, and develop best management approaches to wildlife issues in the Northeast region. New Jersey is an active member of the NEFWDTC and will continue to participate in this and other regional-, watershed-, and landscape- scale cooperative approaches to addressing at-risk species and habitat conservation needs.

Addressing the Impacts of Climate Change on New Jersey’s Wildlife and Their Habitats

Read the section HERE .