In 2018, the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (AFWA) adopted a resolution on landscape conservation that recognized “the importance of collaborating at landscape scales to help fish and wildlife agencies meet their statutory and regulatory responsibilities to conserve fish and wildlife and their habitats.” In response to the resolution, AFWA established a President’s Task Force on Shared Science & Landscape Conservation Priorities in 2020, which recommended that State Wildlife Action Plans (SWAPs) serve as a framework for regional coordination and collaboration.
Within this Plan, the Government of the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) has identified Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN) and outlined strategies to sustain them, including conservation actions to promote species recovery and prevent federal listings under the Endangered Species Act. But to sustain the species that are USVI’s responsibility to protect—and that also reflect the rich biodiversity, culture, and history of the Territory—USVI must consider its role and the influences of the larger Southeast and U.S. Caribbean landscape.
This chapter examines regional, landscape-scale considerations for USVI and serves as a means for the Territory to find potential collaborations to best support the USVI’s SGCN and Regional SGCN (RSGCN). Additionally, some of the threats that impact SGCN have consequences locally and regionally. Addressing these threats effectively requires aligning conservation strategies across jurisdictional boundaries. By using consistent regional information, shared by other Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife (SEAFWA) states and territories to inform their own SWAPs, USVI can better contribute to regional conservation priorities, identify potential landscape-level threats, and help connect the Southeast and Caribbean region’s lands and waters.
USVI’s Conservation Portfolio: Connecting Lands and Waters
The USVI supports a wide diversity of habitats, culturally and historically significant landscapes, and ecosystems that provide benefits to the state as well as the broader Southeast region. USVI plays an important role in connecting the lands and waters of the Southeast Region, as well as hosting some regionally important ecosystems and habitat types like mangrove forest and coral reefs. Many regional and local partners and partnerships are working with the USVI Department of Planning and Natural Resources (DPNR) to help conserve its iconic and important landscapes. According to the Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US, v4.0), approximately 21,494 acres of the lands and waters of the USVI are considered protected (Table 1). This includes important landscapes like Buck Island Reef National Monument, St. Thomas East End Reserves, Salt River Bay National Historic Park and Ecological Preserve, Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge, and Butler Bay Nature Preserve.
In addition to contributing to the conservation landscape of the Southeast, USVI’s lands and waters also benefit the state’s economy. Tourism is the leading economic activity for USVI and accounts for 60% of the Gross Domestic Product[LV1] . In 2023, roughly 2.4 million tourists visited USVI. Marine tourism is especially popular. In addition to recreational value, natural landscapes can support ecosystem services such as storm surge protection, erosion control, and water filtration.
The Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy (SECAS) is a regional conservation initiative that spans the Southeastern United States and U.S. Caribbean. SECAS brings together diverse partners around an ambitious goal: a 10% or greater improvement in the health, function, and connectivity of Southeastern ecosystems by 2060. The Southeast Conservation Blueprint is the primary product of SECAS. The Blueprint is a living, spatial plan that identifies priority areas where conservation action would make an impact toward creating a connected network of lands and waters, based on a suite of natural and cultural resource indicators and a connectivity analysis.
So far, more than 2,500 people from over 650 different organizations have been actively involved in developing the Blueprint. Additionally, Caribbean Blueprint priorities were developed with input from the Caribbean Conservation Community of Practice (CCCoP), which is comprised of community leaders, researchers, universities, non-profits, as well as federal, state, and territorial governments. The Blueprint has helped drive the protection of key parcels on St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John and supported numerous successful Caribbean grant proposals.
The Blueprint recognizes more than 65,000 acres, or roughly 40% of the territory, as a priority for connecting the region’s lands and waters (Table 1, Figure 2). About 55,500 acres are rated as highest or high priority, with an additional 45,869 acres in medium priority (totaling about 36% of the territory). Together, these classes represent the most important areas for shared conservation action, based on a suite of natural and cultural resource indicators. The Blueprint includes more than 60 indicators across its geographic scope. Some indicators only occur within specific ecoregions and in the Caribbean portion of the Blueprint, there are about 18 indicators to represent important natural and cultural resources. Some indicators are unique to the Caribbean, representing unique ecosystems and species like corals and some are analogs to Continental indicators in the Blueprint as a result of variable data availability. Indicator examples include Caribbean karst habitat, landscape condition, greenways and trails, coastal shoreline condition, Caribbean fish hotspots, and more. Indicator data is available on the Blueprint page of the SECAS Atlas.
An additional 9,828 acres (3.9%) are considered priority connections, or key linkages between priority areas that can help facilitate the flow of species and ecological processes within across the territory, while also considering connectivity across the broader region.
The Southeast Blueprint also includes a least-cost path connectivity analysis that identifies corridors that link coastal and inland areas. The corridors connect hubs across the shortest distance possible, while also routing through as much Blueprint priority as possible. The hubs that anchor the connectivity analysis are large patches of highest priority Blueprint areas and/or protected lands. About 58,382 acres (24.4%) of the USVI are considered a hub or corridor, providing many conservation opportunities to support species movement and migration—an important strategy for helping wildlife adapt to landscape-level changes (Figure 3).
Ensuring landscape connectivity across jurisdictional borders is becoming increasingly important for species management as changes in land-use, and weather patterns can shift species distributions. Collaborating with Puerto Rico and even Southeastern states like Florida and Georgia to identify cross-boundary species migration and habitat use can increase regional connectivity for state SGCN and RSGCN. Below are maps that show Southeast Conservation Blueprint (2024) priority lands and waters (Figure 2), the underlying Blueprint connectivity analysis (Figure 3), and a map of impervious surfaces that reflects man-made structures that prohibit rainwater filtration into the ground like buildings, parking lots, and roads (CCAP 2020). The full USVI Blueprint report, which includes some of these maps and more, can be found on the SECAS website.