Priority Habitats and Species Shrubsteppe Decision Support Tools: Implementation Guidance for Land-use Planners and VSP Workgroups

What is this Priority Habitats and Species Implementation Guidance?

The Growth Management Act (GMA) tasks county and city land use planners and Voluntary Stewardship Program (VSP) workgroups with accommodating growth and promoting agriculture while protecting critical areas. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) Priority Habitats and Species (PHS) program and partners have developed several decision support tools to inform such actions. This document provides guidance for how to apply these decision support tools to land use decisions frequently made by Eastern Washington planners and VSP Workgroups.

This PHS Shrubsteppe Implementation Guidance is part of a series of PHS documents including Shrubsteppe Management Recommendations, Shrubsteppe Restoration Manual, Local Government User Guide for PHS Shrubsteppe and Eastside Steppe Maps, and PHS Shrubsteppe and Eastside Steppe Map Technical Report (PDF). Because this Implementation Guidance builds upon these PHS products, in this document we do not repeat basic building blocks such as the PHS definition of shrubsteppe or explain how PHS relates to local government land use mandates in the GMA and Shoreline Management Act (SMA). Please refer to the other documents in this series for those building blocks.

Context

Ecological: Up to 80% of Washington’s shrubsteppe habitat has been lost or degraded. Many populations of shrubsteppe-dependent species are isolated and at heightened risk of local extinction. Land use actions, wildfire, invasive species, and climate change continue to fragment and degrade shrubsteppe habitat and further imperil at-risk species.

Planning mandates: Local governments and VSP workgroups play essential roles in ensuring that Fish and Wildlife Habitat Conservation Areas (FWHCA) are protected through local policies and programs. Under the GMA, local government land use planners and VSP workgroups are responsible for achieving no net loss of shrubsteppe function at the project, jurisdiction, and watershed scales. Local governments are also responsible for avoiding the creation of isolated sub-populations of species.

Problem Statement this Document is Designed to Address

Prior to publication of this document, PHS did not provide written expert opinion to local government planners and VSP workgroups regarding how to interpret and apply multiple shrubsteppe decisions support tools. As a result, these essential conservation partners lacked a basis for knowing where to take specific actions to avoid, minimize, and provide offsetting compensatory mitigation for unavoidable harm to shrubsteppe and shrubsteppe-dependent species at a project, jurisdiction, and/or watershed scale.