Wildlife Areas Habitat Conservation Plan: Initial results of prototyping and beta testing of the draft effects model

The WDFW is developing a multi-species HCP to more fully assess and account for the impacts of recreation and management activities on at-risk species, and provide conservation measures and strategies to compensate for any negative impacts to federally and state listed and other at-risk species that use, or could potentially use, WDFW lands.  As a result, implementation of the HCP will ensure that WDFW conducts land management activities, and permits recreation activities, in ways that meet the requirements of both the WDFW's legislative mandate and the ESA.  The HCP will apply to approximately 900,000 acres of WDFW owned and managed lands statewide.
 
An integral component of such a plan is the development of a model or process for assessing the impacts, conservation opportunities and conservation benefits of WDFW management, operational, maintenance and recreational activities on listed species.  The purpose of this document is to review the HCP predictive effects model, and describe model geoprocessing, model inputs and initial model results.  This information focuses on one covered species (Sharp-tailed Grouse) but the process will be applied to all covered species.  The information presented here builds upon the HCP Datamodel Design (GeoNorth 2007), and the Preliminary Predictive Model (Sutter and Quan 2008).  This document is considered a working draft, which means that the model itself is still in the conceptual design phase, and the data presented here is subject to change.