Introduction
MassWildlife works with many conservation partners throughout the state to protect, restore, and manage habitat so the Commonwealth’s plant and animal populations can thrive. This includes work to keep common species common and targeted efforts to maintain and recover Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN), including state-listed rare species.
For example, MassWildlife’s conservation efforts include collaborations with academic researchers and other partners to:
- Determine how moose, bear, roseate terns, and diamondback terrapins move across the landscape, which helps guide land protection, restoration work. such as culvert removals. and potentially reduce vehicle-wildlife collisions.
- Monitor how habitat restoration projects enhance rare plant and animal populations, such as whip-poor-will, grasshopper sparrows, sandplain gerardia, native bees, and frosted elfin butterflies.
- Monitor the status and trends of many SGCN populations, including brook trout, common eider, barrens buckmoths, and hundreds of additional plants and animals listed under the Massachusetts Endangered Species Act.
This knowledge is critical for effectively targeting conservation actions to ensure the “biggest bang for the buck.” It also facilitates adaptive management, a process where scientists and conservation practitioners learn about complex systems over time and fine-tune management approaches adaptively to improve outcomes.
Monitoring effectiveness, conservation status, and trends
Strong science is essential for cost-effective conservation. Yet, monitoring the status of the Commonwealth’s vulnerable plant and animal populations and their habitats—and understanding the causes of decline and how to reverse them—are daunting tasks requiring significant investment. MassWildlife works with many partners to develop and implement conservation plans and associated monitoring to recover SGCN populations and their habitats. Examples include the Coastal Waterbird Program to track and conserve ground nesting birds, such as piping plovers, terns, and oystercatchers, development of the statewide Grassland Bird Conservation Plan, and ongoing efforts to monitor the status of rare and vulnerable plants of coastal plain pondshores.
MassWildlife maintains extensive databases tracking the occurrences of many species in Massachusetts. The Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program tracks the status of state-listed species, other SGCN, Priority Natural Communities, and many other plants and animals for which the conservation status in the state is unclear. Other efforts include an extensive, decades-long program to track freshwater fish populations and implement related conservation actions, and monitoring of large mammal populations including deer, moose, and black bear.
Effective monitoring is closely linked with the development of conservation plans, implementation of conservation actions, and applied conservation research. The table included below lists many recently completed, ongoing, and planned monitoring, research, and conservation planning projects undertaken with a diversity of state and regional partners. Note that this table is not a comprehensive accounting of all monitoring related to SGCN and their habitats in Massachusetts. Much of the monitoring listed in the table and in the sections below occurs at sites with active management and restoration efforts. This enables MassWildlife and its many partners to assess the effectiveness of conservation actions and adjust future actions to increase effectiveness (see Adaptive management section below).
State-listed species
In addition to the specific projects listed in the table, MassWildlife works with many partners to continually monitor and update the status of state-listed species populations of invertebrates, vertebrates, and plants across the Commonwealth. This is a very labor-intensive undertaking, so triage is necessary, and monitoring frequency varies by several factors, including degree of imperilment. Priorities for the next 5-10 years include, but are not limited to:
- Puritan and northeastern beach tiger beetle monitoring
- Frosted elfin monitoring
- State-endangered and threatened freshwater mussel monitoring
- State-endangered plant monitoring, including American chafseed and New England eupatorium
- Endangered reptile and amphibian monitoring, including eastern spadefoot and diamondback terrapin assessments
- Roseate tern and piping plover monitoring
Regional and state rare plant monitoring benefits from an important partnership with Native Plant Trust and their volunteer network.
Mammals
Monitoring priorities for SGCN include New England cottontail, bear, and moose. Occupancy and abundance monitoring for New England cottontail relies primarily on standardized fecal pellet collection. Black bear monitoring relies on mortality and distribution data, as well as radio-tracking of female bears with cubs.
Birds
Monitoring priorities for SGCN that are not state-listed include ruffed grouse, American woodcock, American black duck, common eider, long-tailed duck, American kestrel, American oystercatcher, and saltmarsh sparrow. The Christmas Bird Count and Breeding Bird Survey are other examples of statewide monitoring undertaken as part of broader North American efforts.
Fish
MassWildlife takes a fish community approach to long-term monitoring of rivers, streams, lakes, and ponds. This includes sampling of SGCN, such as bridle shiner and northern redbelly dace. MassWildlife, Division of Marine Fisheries, and other partners also monitor anadromous fish, such as herring and shad, at dams and other sites and conduct fish kill investigations.
Regional efforts
It is important to look beyond Massachusetts’ borders and coordinate planning for SGCN species and habitats by working with other states in the region. MassWildlife participates in the Regional Conservation Needs grant program, funded through federal State Wildlife Grant funds apportioned to each state, to address critical landscape-scale wildlife conservation needs by combining the resources of numerous wildlife management agencies, leveraging funds, and prioritizing conservation actions identified in State Wildlife Action Plans (SWAP). MassWildlife also participates in the Northeast Fish and Wildlife Diversity Technical Committee and its projects, including maintaining a list of Regional SGCN and data management for shared species. Many examples of regional projects are listed in the conservation planning, monitoring, and research table below. See Conservation Actions for other examples of regional conservation efforts.
Conservation planning, monitoring, and research
The table below lists existing and future projects aimed at evaluating the condition of wildlife and habitats in Massachusetts and across the region.
Adaptive management
There are many examples where monitoring has informed and improved implementation of management actions. This includes, but is not limited to, adjustments in the timing and frequency of prescribed burning, refined initial treatments to restore barrens habitat, improved management of turtle nesting habitat, improved approaches to the long-term control of invasive plants, such as phragmites and spotted knapweed, and improved standard operating procedures (SOPs) for various habitat restoration activities. MassWildlife is committed to employing principles of adaptive management wherever applicable to ensure effective and efficient conservation implementation.