The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP) is designed to enhance CDFW conservation efforts. To this end, the plan establishes regions called “Provinces”, which are composed of spatially defined “Conservation Units”. Each Conservation Unit has “targets”, which are ecosystems or aquatic features which have distinct characteristics which are considered especially worth of focused conservation efforts.

These Provinces, Conservation Units, and Targets are discussed in Chapter 5 of the 2015 SWAP Update, which can be found at https://wildlife.ca.gov/SWAP/Final. There are two distinct groups of conservation units. Terrestrial units represent those that protect terrestrial features, such as marshes, grasslands, or riparian habitats. Aquatic units protect aquatic features, such as fisheries or desert waters and are identified in another dataset. . This data set shows the spatial locations of terrestrial Conservation Units and identifies which Provinces they are associated with as well as where to find information about Conservation Targets within each Unit. It is the responsibility of the project proponent to determine if their project actually contains target habitat(s). That can be done by identifying the Province and Conservation Unit in which the project occurs and then reviewing Table 1 in the appropriate section of Chapter 5 of the SWAP 2015 document.

To use this data set, locate your project and identify the chapter and page where the information about the Conservation Targets can be found. Click on the Chapter link and go to the appropriate page to identify the characteristics of the Conservation Targets and compare them to the characteristics of the vegetation on your site.