This report details a regional assessment framework developed by staff at The Conservation Fund and in the USFWS-NWRS-Division of Natural Resources and Conservation Planning (DNRCP) with inputs from biologists from field stations (Detroit Lakes WMD and Morris WMD) and the Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program. The framework is primarily for use by members of DNRCP to provide support and information to regional leadership and field stations when engaged in planning, evaluation, or decision exercises. Taking a landscape perspective is important for appreciating ecosystem context and when making planning, acquisition, and management decisions (USFWS 2013). Ecosystem composition, structure, function, and resilience depend on the spatial and temporal context of the ecosystem. Therefore, it is crucial that planners incorporate information about how humans have and will continue to alter landscapes and affect ecological patterns and processes (Parmesan and Yohe 2003).

The motivation for developing this assessment framework was to provide a means for examining the ecological context of potential acquisitions and current fee title lands in regard to resilience, connectivity, and threats from human development. In this way, potential acquisitions may be compared, which allows for targeting the locations that best meet Regional and System-wide acquisition goals. For the existing system, the assessment framework can be used to develop strategies to improve resilience or to facilitate system transitions to projected conditions. The framework is flexible in that it can be used in a myriad of ways as new questions and new data arise.

The Midwest Conservation Assessment framework described herein: • incorporates The Nature Conservancy’s Resilient and Connected Landscapes data layers (Anderson et al. 2018), the Eastern US (Anderson et al. 2015, https://www.conservationgateway.org/conservationbygeography/northamerica/unitedstates/edc/reportsdata/terrestrial/resilience/pages/default.aspx (2020)) • highlights areas of above average resilience within the region • highlights areas threatened by development and where improving connectivity may improve resilience and foster natural adaptation • provides a means for comparing resilience, threat level, and connectivity among candidate parcels of land • provides a means for visualizing potential future regional bird hotspots under climate change • provides information the Service can use when engaging in discussions regarding land conservation with partner agencies • identifies which areas, including current NWR’s, are likely natural strongholds (defined as: resilient sites that currently support exemplary habitats, wildlife, or rare species, and may provide refuge for these elements as the climate changes) within the region • provides ecological context for individual and complexes of Refuges that can be to inform future planning efforts

This framework is best used in conjunction with information from other websites (See below); online tools (See below); the Regional Hydrological Vulnerability Assessment; (Delaney et al 2020); The Audubon Bird Briefs for Legacy Region 3 (and results from research specific to the National Wildlife Refuge System (Allstadt et al. 2016, Bateman et al. 2015, 2016a,b, Hamilton et al 2015, 2016, Martinuzzi et al. 2015, 2016).