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Strategy

Goals

The partners developed 6 goals to strive for as part of our 5-year strategic plan. These goals are:

  1. Capacity Building - The Lower Hudson PRISM has a robust public identity, strong internal structure and a sustainable resource base to continue its mission.
  2. Conservation Targets - The Lower Hudson PRISM protects the rich, native biodiversity of the Lower Hudson Valley by focusing on priority targets for conservation.
  3. Strategic Invasive Species Management - The Lower Hudson PRISM supports and optimizes regional conservation through strategic invasive species management.
  4.  Education and Outreach - The Lower Hudson PRISM reaches out to new audiences and delivers education that communicates the positive impacts of invasive species management on ecosystems. The Lower Hudson PRISM offers clear steps for action on personal and community levels.
  5.  Mitigating Pathways of Invasion - PRISM has a coordinated program to prevent species introduction by focusing on pathways.
  6.  Information Exchange - The establishment of an information exchange allows Lower Hudson PRISM partners and other professionals to strategically manage and integrate information relevant to the management of invasive species and offer that information to any person, group, agency (partner and non-partner alike).

2017 Action Plan

Our work is guided by an annual action plan constructed and approved by the partners. The Lower Hudson PRISM partners work toward completing these objectives, and proposals are solicited through an RFP process to address other objectives to ensure we complete our plan.

2017 Action Plan (PDF) approved 11/16/16 -- the task list and assignments will be updated throughout the year. The Goals and Objectives will remain unchanged.


Request for Proposals

The 2017 Request for Proposals was issued January 17, 2017.


Priority Species

The following guidelines for prioritizing invasive species for survey and removal projects were adopted by the partners 11/5/14 for use during 2015. These guidelines remain the latest guidelines we have available.

Guideline - 2015 Species Prioritization Guidelines (PDF)

Species categorizations - in 2016 a working group categorized a large number of invasive plants species into Widespread, Established, Emerging, Threat, Watch categories for use with the 2015 prioritization guidelines.

Species Categorizations (PDF) - DRAFT March 7, 2016


Invasive Species Prevention Zones (ISPZ)

Candidate sites for Invasive Species Prevention Zones will be considered based on the following guidelines.
Goals for selecing ISPZ are: to protect areas with low infestation rates, to serve as a rallying point, and to provide education and outreach.

Guideline– for 2015

  • Minimally invaded, dominated by natives
  •  Selection of site for conservation is defensible (those proposing the site should provide arguments)
  •  The site has been adopted for long-term stewardship by a group or groups (those proposing the site should elaborate the commitments)
  • No acreage size limit

Conservation Targets

Proposals which aim to protect conservation species or habitats are requested to use our defined conservation target layers and identify which layers their project intersects and to list those intersecting layers in their project proposal.

Each of the individual Conservation Target layers represents general approximations of the regional distributions of important conservation and biodiversity features. The layers were constructed to be employed at the regional, watershed scale and the depicted boundaries are, nearly without exception, very approximate. They should be considered to be gradient "ribbons" versus hard edges, with unknowable sizes. It is suggested that projects being proposed fall well within any of the depicted target regions.

  • Audubon Important Bird Areas (IBA)
  • Natural Heritage Program Element Occurrences (Natural Heritage Program Communities layer is included in lieu of element occurences which cannot be distributed)
  • Hudson River Estuary Program Significant Biodiversity areas
  • TNC Portfolio and Focal areas
  • NYS Parks and Protected lands
  • Forest blocks from Landfire (>500 acres)
  • Landscape-scale Connectivity

Download a file that can be read into Google Earth with each of these layers==> here (KMZ).


 

PRISM Pathways and Audiences

The pathways working group put together a review of possible pathways of invasive species introductions into the Lower Hudson region, examples of such introductions and audiences to be reached out to with education to aid in mitigating these pathways.

LHPRISM Pathways and Audiences (PDF)