Partner Collaboration

DFW has long-standing and well-established relationships with federal and local agencies, indeed many of them contributed significantly to the development and update of the SWAP and will continue as we implement the actions of the SWAP.

In addition to Expert Review, several partners have collaborated in filling data gaps, planning and prioritizing conservation actions, addressing conservation threats, and other parts of this plan. Also see below for a table of collaborators, their affiliations, and aspects of the SWAP that they contributed to:

• More than 2,500 people from over 650 different organizations have been actively involved in developing the Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy Blueprints. The U.S. Caribbean Blueprint priorities were developed with input from the Caribbean Conservation Community of Practice (CCCoP), which was 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 (Recovery Land Acquisition Grant) and supported successful Caribbean grant proposals for coastal resilience from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (America the Beautiful) and NOAA's Coastal Resilience Fund totaling over $71 million dollars.  The Conservation Community of Practice and Conservation Opportunity Areas were developed by staff of the Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy (SECAS) partnership with special thanks to Louise Vaughn, Alex Lamle, Hilary Morris, Rua Modecai, and Dr. Amanda Sesser.

• The Virgin Islands Plant Working Group made up of five external botanists from the three islands developed a list of plants most in need of conservation that had previously authored reports on plant species, Rudy O'Reilly, Eleanor Gibney, Toni Thomas, Dewey Hollister, and Olasee Davis. They started with from a review of recent major botanical publications, landscaping consultants, government agencies, and historical documents and based on current needs and prioritizations, and narrowed a list of over 650 plants down to 66 species which are now part of the SGCN list. The working group worked over three years and was facilitated by Division of Fish and Wildlife to aggregate the plant lists, review all candidate species, and justify their inclusion as SGCN.

• Through a competitive SWG award to the Division of Fish and Wildlife, the Southeast Aquatic Resources Partnership and Clemson University conducted surveys across the territory for freshwater fauna with Jacob Laurain, Todd Ewing and Dr. Brandon Peoples. One of the components to this project was to develop a list of suggested SGCN for freshwater fauna based on survey results. 

• Through a partnership with the Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center and Drs. Katherine Smith and Hailey Shanovich we were able to add a list of terrestrial invertebrates. This list was based on a review of all verified observations through GBIF, specimen collections, and recent surveys by the USGS Bee Lab. Although most terrestrial invertebrates continue to be data deficient, we will be able to work toward filling those data gaps for the next SWAP update. The Key Conservation Issues were developed by staff of the SECASC and SECAS.

• Through a partnership to with WildMon and Dr. Marconi Campos we were able to add a list of terrestrial invertebrates and ranges for species which were available based on data mining from GBIF, iNaturalist and our acoustic data detections. 

• The St. Croix Environmental Association facilitated public comment on wildlife issues in the U.S. Virgin Islands and contributed significant research to species profiles and distributions.

• The Wildlife Health issues were developed by the Regional Fish and Wildlife Health Coordinators with special thanks to Drs. Ellen Haynes and Mark Ruder and the Southeast Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study.

• The Key Conservation Issues were developed by staff of the U.S. Geological Survey's SECASC with special thanks to Dr. Hailey Shanovich and Dr. Katherine Smith.

• We would like to thank the funder of this project the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services Office of Conservation Investment.