MassWildlife Introduces Habitat Management Database

The Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife (MDFW) supports several similar but distinct programs which engage in active habitat management for wildlife purposes: the MDFW Landowner Incentive Program provides cost-share grants and technical assistance for a wide range of at-risk plant and animal species with private landowners, non-profit conservation groups who own land, along with land holding sportsmen’s clubs and land trusts;  the MDFW Upland Program conducts habitat management activities for upland wildlife species primarily on the MDFW Wildlife Management Areas; the MDFW Ecological Restoration Program is responsible for habitat management for rare plant and animal species on MDFW lands;  the MDFW Upland Game Bird Program works with private landowners to increase the amount of habitat available for these species throughout the Commonwealth; the MDFW Districts mow grasslands on Wildlife Management Areas for the benefit of both game and non-game species; and the MDFW Forestry Program focuses on a managing forest land on MDFW property for the benefit of many game and no-game species.

The leaders of these programs and the administration identified a need to better coordinate the delivery of these programs on a landscape scale.  The first step toward better coordination of the programs was met through the development of a shared, readily accessible, geospatial database which describes the management activities, target species and habitats, acres and types of management and where the projects are located within the state.  Program managers and administrators can now access this database to view timely information collected from all of the MDFW habitat management programs.  Individual project information or summary information can be viewed in tabular form or displayed spatially on various scales of maps.  Future plans call for expanding this database to include habitat management information provided by partners within the state and throughout the region.

The Atlantic Coast Joint Venture and Mass Division of Fisheries & Wildlife (MDFW) hosted a web presentation (Jan. 14^th 2010) on the Managed Lands Database.

Partners across the northeast region have expressed interest in using a system like this to coordinate habitat management activities on a landscape scale, target work on focal species (e.g., New England Cottontail), estimate habitat carrying capacity or population sizes, as a sampling framework for coordinated monitoring, to report annual accomplishments, and other uses.  In the future, they are hoping to expand the geographic extent of the MDFW database into a platform that could serve conservation partners throughout the region.

If you are interested in the presentation by Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife on their habitat management database, the presentation was filmed and is available via an archive.