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HomeNewsNews 2013WGA Wildlife Council developing west-wide wildlife map and display tool; December 2012 Business Meeting Summary now available

WGA Wildlife Council developing west-wide wildlife map and display tool; December 2012 Business Meeting Summary now available

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DENVER -- The Western Governors’ Wildlife Council (WGWC) is advancing its effort to develop a west-wide Crucial Habitat Assessment Tool, the Wildlife Council announced today.

By finalizing a contract with Applied Geographics, a firm that specializes in creating user-friendly interfaces for complex GIS data, the Wildlife Council has set the wheels in motion for an online wildlife mapping tool that will debut by December 2013. The viewer will display information on important wildlife habitat and corridors across 16 western states in the WGWC’s Crucial Habitat Assessment Tool, or CHAT.

 

“We are excited about this step in the development of CHAT,” said John Harja, Senior Policy Analyst in Utah’s Public Lands Policy Coordination Office and Chair of the WGWC. “The regional viewer application will allow the public and decision makers to better include state priorities for fish and wildlife in the earliest stages of the planning process, particularly for energy and transportation.”

The Western Governors first proposed a project in 2008 that would create publically available, state-based maps to display crucial wildlife habitat and corridor information in a consistent manner across the West. Since 2010, the WGWC has worked to fulfill this vision, leading to the development of the west-wide CHAT. In addition to the regional CHAT, several individual states have already established CHATs.

Applied Geographics (AppGeo) has extensive experience in working with the states on a variety of environmental and GIS-focused projects. Previously, AppGeo helped to create a similar multi-state viewing application for species range and habitat distribution at a national scale for the USGS National Gap Analysis Program.

The WGWC selected AppGeo to develop the CHAT viewer at its meeting on December 5-6, 2012. A summary of that meeting is available online.

At the meeting, Arizona BLM Director Ray Suazo spoke to how his agency had used wildlife data – which ultimately became Arizona’s state CHAT, HabiMapTM Arizona – in their planning processes.  A case study of the partnership between BLM and HabiMap is available on WGA’s website.

 

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