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Conservation Targets

Conservation Targets

Proposals which aim to protect conservation species or habitats may use our defined conservation target layers and identify which layers their project intersects and to list those intersecting layers in their project proposal.

Each of the individual Conservation Target layers represents general approximations of the regional distributions of important conservation and biodiversity features. The layers were constructed to be employed at the regional, watershed scale and the depicted boundaries are, nearly without exception, very approximate. They should be considered to be gradient "ribbons" versus hard edges, with unknowable sizes. It is suggested that projects being proposed fall well within any of the depicted target regions.

  • Audubon Important Bird Areas (IBA)
  • Natural Heritage Program Element Occurrences (Natural Heritage Program Communities layer is included in lieu of element occurences which cannot be distributed)
  • Hudson River Estuary Program Significant Biodiversity areas
  • TNC Portfolio and Focal areas
  • NYS Parks and Protected lands
  • Forest blocks from Landfire (>500 acres)
  • Landscape-scale Connectivity

Download a file that can be read into Google Earth with each of these layers==> here (KMZ).