| Woodcock Conservation Plan |
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The Woodcock Conservation Plan emerged from the efforts of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, state wildlife management agencies agencies and non-governmental organizations known as the Woodcock Task Force. The Woodcock Task Force recognized that bird interest groups dedicated generally to conservation of waterfowl, shorebirds, neo-tropical migrant songbirds and waterbirds had developed strategic plans to set population objectives, rank the level of risk, define amounts or types of critical habitat, and outline funding deficiencies. Goals from those plans would drive agency funding and priorities. Woodcock, however, had not received similar attention. To allow woodcock needs to compete with other bird needs, a conservation plan was needed. With funding from a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to the Wildlife Management Institute, a subset of the task force took on the job of writing the Woodcock Conservation Plan. The task force established a planning team with individual team members responsible for the compilation of data and recommendations within Bird Conservation Regions (BCRs). Jim Kelley, as plan coordinator, was responsible for coordination of the planning team. BCR authors were responsible for retrieval and data collection, compilation of existing data from state, federal or other sources and coordination with the various states. State wildlife agency personnel worked with the regional coordinator to provide state specific input. The Woodcock Conservation Plan will be used to identify and form habitat partnerships with federal, state, provincial, tribal, and local governments, businesses, conservation organizations, and volunteers. The projects identified in the plan not only will benefit woodcock, but will make substantial contributions toward the conservation of many other wildlife species. More information is available at Timberdoodle.org.
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