Regional Conservation Opportunity Areas

How do we ensure that species already on the brink, like the New England cottontail, saltmarsh sparrow, wood turtle, and Karner blue butterfly, will be able to find places to persist in the Northeast in the face of land-use and climate change? How do we keep more common species common in the context of these changes?

The Regional Conservation Opportunity Areas (RCOAs) project brings together experts from states, conservation organizations, and universities to identify places where the actions of individual agencies to support Regional Species of Greatest Conservation Need, restore priority ecosystems, protect core landscapes, and promote connectivity between them, will have the greatest benefit for fish and wildlife across the region.

The result of this collaborative effort will be a spatially delineated network of priority areas and accompanying regionally consistent datasets that can be used by the Northeast Fish and Wildlife Diversity Technical Committee (NEFWDTC), state staff, and conservation partners to inform decisions about protecting land and restoring habitat, and to justify those decisions among their stakeholders and funders.

Meet the RCOA team

Learn about the RCOA process