COMMUNITY TOOLS:     Planning Your Wildlife Conservation Project

Campton

How can you work effectively with your community to develop and implement a wildlife conservation project in your town? Learn how your can get organized by following the steps below:

1. Organize Your Project Team

  • Invite local boards, other local groups and area residents to an initial planning meeting to brainstorm goals and objectives for your project.
  • Establish a work group of 5-7 interested volunteers to work on the project and choose a group leader.

2.   Review Available Information

  • Review the community's existing natural resources documents, such as natural resources inventory, conservation plan, master plan, water resources protection plan, other natural resources studies, etc.
  • If you don't have a natural resource inventory (NRI), the basic building block for many subsequent actions, consider conducting one or revising an outdated NRI (see Natural Resource Inventories).

3.   Develop a Plan

  • Identify a project your group can feasibly accomplish within a one-year time frame.
  • Define the geographic scope (a town, watershed or region).Review Community Stories to get ideas from other communities experiences with conserving wildlife and habitats.
  • Review the Community Action Tools appropriate for the actions you plan to take to conserve wildlife habitats in your community.
  • Develop work plan that identifies actions, a time line, and assign group members to tasks.
  • If any actions need funding, develop a budget and identify potential funding sources.
  • Identify local resources, e.g. conservation groups, land trusts, public support, support from local officials, funds etc.

4.   Keep the Public Informed

  • Inform your community about your project. Host displays at public events, run articles in local papers, keep a blog on the town website, etc.
  • Public Outreach and Wildlife Habitat - Engage in education and outreach to landowners, voters and municipal officials.