2025 Midwest Fish & Wildlife Conference

AUTHORS: Rachael Carlberg, US Fish & Wildlife Service

ABSTRACT: This session will provide a brief overview of the Midwest Landscape Initiative (MLI), with an emphasis on MLI's efforts related to Regional Species of Greatest Conservation Need and State Wildlife Action Plan coordination and support. Participants will learn about resources for at-risk species conservation developed by MLI as well as opportunities for engagement. Participants are also encouraged to attend the remaining sessions of this symposium, which will provide diverse examples of landscape conservation efforts across geographies and sectors.

AUTHORS: Karl Malcolm, U.S. Forest Service

ABSTRACT: The perspectives, philosophies, and relationships of individuals differ in terms of how we perceive and experience land, and how and why (or whether, even) we value fish, wildlife, and undeveloped places. Global urbanization and associated distancing of people from the natural world present conservation professionals with the challenges of trying to connect our work to rapidly shifting and potentially disinterested publics. In some cases, our organizational language, reputation, history, modes of communication, rate of adaptation, and internal and external social and political pressures make this work even more difficult. By considering the various forms of relationships (i.e., Land Languages) “spoken” by those we seek to serve, we can inform and reimagine the framing of our efforts, and perhaps even influence our own personal perspectives as conservationists such that the concepts underpinning our work are of undeniable relevance and value to all members of society. As we grapple with the need for broader support in conservation mission delivery in North America, a shift in framing has the potential to fully honor the generations of leadership and investment that have helped stem the tide of species and habitat loss since the 19th century while still allowing space to imagine what might be different in our approaches now and in the future. A consideration of land languages (i.e., ontologies) that predate European arrival on the continent, and which remain at the core of numerous contemporary cultural identities, has tremendous applicability in these explorations as we chart a path with hopes for greater sustainability and conservation engagement. This presentation will explore sources of divisiveness and disconnection while also highlighting critical common ground and offering examples and ideas for our shared journey ahead.

AUTHORS: David D. Hoffman, Widlife Research Technician, Iowa Department of Natural Resources

ABSTRACT: A primary mission of the Iowa DNR: To conserve and enhance our natural resources in cooperation with individuals and organizations to improve the quality of life in Iowa and ensure a legacy for future generations. A primary objective in achieving this is by protecting and restoring habitat. “Trumpet the Cause for Wetlands” is one of the wildlife and habitat restoration slogans. It is one method being utilized to connect, empower and instill an ownership with the people we serve. Trumpeter swans serve as excellent ambassadors for promoting wetland values, water quality, the environment, and enriching the quality of life. Over 450 swan releases and 40 winter swan viewing events “Swan Soiree” have been conducted by IADNR and county conservation staff. School children, media, legislators and the public have been invited to attend. The goal is to educate, engage and connect people with the Trumpeters and especially their habitat. An estimated 5,000-15,000 students and public have been impacted annually since 1995. Observed results have included a greater awareness, appreciation and empowerment. This has translated into additional wetland habitat acres being restored, improved water quality at restoration sites and increased wildlife populations including Trumpeter swans. Donations have also been received at these events to help support swan and wetland restoration. Money has come from a wide variety of swan enthusiasts, conservation groups, and charities. When combined with considerable soft match/in-kind contributions, a conservative estimate totaling over 1.5 million dollars has been raised to directly to fund swan and habitat reintroduction in Iowa. Additional outreach includes a Trumpeter swan and wetland education and activity manual. The manual was developed in 1996 has been distributed to Iowa school teachers and recently updated and offered for nationwide distribution. The public outreach effort has been a huge success by raising awareness in regards to these magnificent birds, habitat and by providing critical funding to carry out the work. It is important to engage, connect, empower and ultimately instill an ownership of our natural resources with the public. How do we measure this value? During challenging times with budget and staff cuts, outreach and education is often a low priority, plus many employees are not often skilled, educated or feel comfortable with this type of public involvement. People protect what they value. How do we better connect and empower the public and Gen Alpha to value and protect habitat?

AUTHORS: Megan Buchanan, The Nature Conservancy; Nate Muenks, Missouri Department of Conservation; Andrew White, Quail Forever Pheasants Forever; Ryan Gauger, The Nature Conservancy; Keith Summerville, Drake University

ABSTRACT: Landscape conservation requires us to work collaboratively, across property boundaries and throughout generations. The remnant prairies, working ranches, forests, woodlands, and numerous other habitats that stitch together Missouri’s unique landscapes are facing increasingly complex threats, and the long-term health and resilience of these landscapes depends on a long-term collective commitment from all of us. But collectively, we simply aren’t managing enough habitat acreage annually to keep up with succession, invasive species, and the life history needs of Missouri’s full suite of biodiversity. We have a critical need for more habitat and invasive species management. Missouri’s habitat strike teams were developed to bridge this gap, working collaboratively at the landscape scale.

The habitat strike teams are strategically positioned in Missouri Priority Geographies and Conservation Opportunity Areas: key landscapes that hold high potential for conserving our state’s diverse habitats and the plants and animals that depend on them. Within these landscapes, the mobile strike teams work across public and private land, providing basic habitat management such as prescribed fire, invasive species control, and forest stand improvements. These teams are integrated within the landscapes they serve, working alongside local conservation partners and developing relationships with private landowners. For public land management agencies, the strike teams add critical boots-on-the-ground habitat management capacity, especially important for maximizing acres managed during narrow treatment windows. Because the strike teams provide private landowners with initial habitat management services free-of-charge, they reduce the upfront cost barrier and better position landowners for continued conservation management through existing means, such as government cost-share programs. The habitat strike teams are also helping develop the future conservation workforce, providing college students with summer internships through partnerships with local Universities.

In this talk, you’ll hear the story of the Missouri habitat strike teams and partnering around a shared vision for collaborative landscape conservation.

AUTHORS: Rachael Carlberg, US Fish & Wildlife Service; Claire Beck, Midwest Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies; Kate Parsons, US Fish & Wildlife Service; Lorisa Smith, Missouri Department of Conservation; Alexander Wright, US Fish & Wildlife Service

ABSTRACT: This symposium will conclude with a panel discussion offering diverse backgrounds and perspectives on working in collaborative landscape conservation. Panelists will share their professional journeys and what led them to engage in collaborative work. The panelists will discuss how conservation practitioners across different roles and organizations can advance landscape conservation in the Midwest. They will be asked their vision for shaping the future landscape of the Midwest, including what they foresee as the toughest challenges. The panel will also discuss skillsets needed to successfully engage in collaborative landscape conservation and how early-career professionals can advance this work in their careers. Everyone is invited to join the conversation, especially students to focus on the future of collaborative work. We encourage the audience to ask questions and share their perspectives. We invite all backgrounds to join this conversation, from directors to management biologists to students to field technicians to policy analysts and everyone among and between. The work in our region is enhanced by the diversity of backgrounds and perspectives shared.

AUTHORS: Alex Wright, US Fish & Wildlife Service; Kelly VanBeek, US Fish & Wildlife Service; Tyler Harms, Iowa Department of Natural Resources; Doug Gorby, Upper Mississippi/Great Lakes Joint Venture, US Fish & Wildlife Service; Bill Moritz, Wildlife Management Institute; John Carlson, US Fish & Wildlife Service; Kelley Myers Tymeson, US Fish & Wildlife Service

ABSTRACT: Ranchers, farmers, water resource managers, wildlife biologists, agronomists, corporate sustainability officers, and policy makers have all voiced their desire to see a collective, collaborative approach to conserving and managing grasslands. The Midwest Grasslands Summit was held August 27-29, 2024 at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Gardens in Des Moines, Iowa to chart a partner-focused path forward for our most critically imperiled ecosystem in the Midwest, the Tallgrass Prairie Ecosystem. The summit engaged a broad and diverse audience of representatives from government agencies, Native Nations, NGOs, industry and agricultural organizations, and private landowners to develop a collective vision and identify collaborative actions to advance grassland conservation in the Midwest. We will report out on these efforts to begin (1) Shaping a unified vision for native and surrogate tallgrass habitats across the Midwest, (2) Build an active coalition of people invested in increasing grasslands on the landscape, and (3) Identify collaborative actions to pursue next steps moving forward to realize the vision of this effort.

AUTHORS: Rebecca Sloan, Merjent

ABSTRACT: Landscape-level conservation planning is key to the long-term protection of the ecosystem services that support species habitat, however, funding to implement conservations projects is limited. Habitat protection and restoration projects to offset or mitigate impacts to threatened and endangered species from public or private construction, operations, and maintenance projects are relatively common but typically occur in a “piece-meal” fashion outside a larger planning context. As a result, these projects are less likely to result in meaningful conservation or contribute to species’ recovery goals.
Habitat Conservation Plans or HCPs offer a potential compromise. While HCPs are prepared as part of an application for an incidental take permit under Section 10 of the Endangered Species Act, they also provide an opportunity to receive federal funding for landscape-level planning. HCPs include typical conservation planning components such as biological goals and objectives, monitoring and adaptive management programs, and long-term planning horizons. Also, HCPs provide an excellent framework for multi-stakeholder decision-making.
HCPs are best suited for public or private entities that have relatively frequent endangered species permitting needs across a large geographic area; require regulatory certainty to meet construction, operations, or maintenance program schedules; and/or seek to maximize the conservation value from environmental impact funds. In this session we will discuss the required components of an HCP and how they relate to landscape-level planning. We will also discuss how HCPs can be used to benefit both listed and non-listed species; protect and restore ecosystem processes such as flooding or connectivity; and serve as a central planning document for stakeholders with varying goals and objectives. Lastly, we will touch upon the diversity of scenarios for which an HCP may be suitable and how to most effectively take advantage of available federal funding.

AUTHORS: Michael Spalding, Southern Indiana Sentinel Landscape and Conservation Law Center; Robert McCrea, Southern Indiana Sentinel Landscape and Conservation Law Center

ABSTRACT: Sentinel Landscapes are areas where conservation, working lands, and national defense interests converge to work towards achieving mutually shared goals. They are anchored by at least one military installation and contain high priority lands for USDA, DOD, and DOI. Designated in 2022, the Southern Indiana Sentinel Landscape (SISL) covers a 3.5-million-acre region of Southern Indiana. SISL Partners are working together to preserve and protect military missions, support sustainable farming and forestry, restore and sustain ecosystems, bolster human communities and partner capacity, and increase landscape resiliency. Our presentation will highlight several early successes of this young partnership that demonstrate how landscape level conservation is possible in a highly fragmented midwestern landscape (90% of the land in this area is privately owned). We will explain how the partnership leverages partner resources, utilizes federal funding opportunities, and develops innovative tools to build an overall program for landscape scale conservation. We will specifically discuss how the partnership: (1) utilizes the USDA NRCS Regional Conservation Partnership Program to increase private landowner engagement with conservation and permanently protect and restore over 2,500 acres of forestland through conservation easements, restore an additional 5,000 to 10,000 acres of oak-hickory forest ecosystems; (2) organizes projects for land protection with funding from The Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration Program; and (3) developed two GIS web-based applications. One assists private landowner access to all available cost share and technical assistance programs. The other helps SISL partners determine connectivity priorities for land conservation.

AUTHORS: Jon Podoliak Missouri Department of Conservation; Tom Bonnot US Fish and Wildlife Service; Nate Muenks Missouri Department of Conservation; Shelby Timm Missouri Department of Conservation; Billy Huggins University of Missouri

ABSTRACT: The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) has been a leader among states in advancing landscape conservation. Through landscape-scale planning and prioritization as part of the implementation of the Missouri Comprehensive Conservation Strategy, we have identified 11 Priority Geographies (PGs) in which we are working with partners, including private landowners, to conserve species, habitats, and ecosystem functions. These PGs represent areas with some of the most opportunity for conservation success and remaining intact habitat. To assess ongoing management actions and community engagement within PGs, the department and partners developed a prototype for a Landscape Health Index (LHI) that collects, analyzes, and integrates a variety of data to monitor the responses of species and landscapes to conservation efforts and measures progress over time. Data on biotic communities, landscape processes, and social condition are combined into one score for each PG that can be tracked over time. Further, the index is built on layers of data that can be assessed individually, allowing practitioners to assess which aspect of a landscape may not be meeting expected levels based on predefined goals and respond accordingly. The LHI has been implemented in two pilot PGs and work is ongoing to implement in the remaining nine. We will detail the results from the two pilot PGs as well as updates to the process and ongoing efforts.

AUTHORS:  Catherine O'Reilly, University of Illinois Chicago

ABSTRACT:  Pollinator species have seen sharp population declines throughout this century, which has severe ramifications for ecosystem stability. Finding creative solutions to restore pollinator habitat is vital to preserving both pollinators and ecosystems, and this requires developing landscape-scale conservation initiatives for pollinators that involve non-traditional conservation landscapes and partners.

One method for engaging non-traditional stakeholders in pollinator conservation is through Section 10 Conservation Benefit Agreements (CBAs). These agreements, established under Section 10(a)(1)(A) of the Endangered Species Act, are voluntary conservation agreements between non-federal landowners and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in which participating organizations agree to provide a net conservation benefit to targeted species in exchange for assurances that additional or management activities for these species will not be required. This encourages pollinator conservation from non-traditional conservation partners by offering operational flexibility and regulatory certainty to participants while establishing clear standards for what conservation actions are required to achieve a net conservation benefit for the targeted species.

A Section 10 agreement that promotes pollinator conservation on non-traditional conservation landscapes is the Nationwide Candidate Conservation Agreement for Monarch Butterfly (the Monarch CCAA). The Monarch CCAA is a Section 10 agreement between the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and energy and transportation companies that is designed to create habitat for monarchs on energy and transportation rights-of-way. A similar agreement has been developed by UIC and partners which focuses on at-risk bumble bee species, building upon the conservation success of the CCAA.

I will present on how CBAs encourage landscape-scale conservation efforts from non-traditional partners by offering flexibility and assurances in exchange for conservation actions, and what motivates the creation of a CBA. Brief updates on the Monarch CCAA and bumble bee agreement will be shared to exemplify how Section 10 agreements work in practice.