ANCHOR
What is ANCHOR?
ANCHOR is a new conservation approach that builds Areawide Networks to Connect Habitat and Optimize Resiliency. The approach guides investments in strategic “anchor” locations to connect wildlife populations, enhance landscape resiliency, and strengthen rural economies. Unlike earlier approaches, ANCHOR integrates practices of conservation management by: (1) generating a library of species-specific habitat connectivity models at range wide scales, (2) ranking site selections to focus local action on the highest priority places, and (3) magnifying each local investment by placing it in the context of continental, national, and regional conservation outcomes. ANCHOR addresses the natural resource management challenges for the 21st century.
What is the ANCHOR Approach?
SITE SELECTION
Connectivity ranking scores are calculated to determine the relative importance of specific public or large private lands to serve as anchors and build resiliency across working landscapes. Partnerships are formed to secure anchor sites across a landscape network and maintain habitat at those
sites. Through voluntary conservation actions, private landowners and corporate partners can play an important role in ANCHOR partnerships with support from USDA Farm Bill Conservation Programs and other opportunities.
ESTABLISHING NETWORKS
The ANCHOR approach identifies and protects important travel and migration corridors necessary for wildlife to adapt to changing land uses and climate impacts. New efforts are already underway to use the ANCHOR approach to benefit additional species and landscapes. The Trinational Monarch Conservation Partnership has joined forces with ANCHOR and will have their connectivity model tentatively completed by Summer 2025 to guide conservation delivery that will benefit monarch butterflies and other declining pollinators. This will be the second model added to the ANCHOR library for partnership action.
Map depicts ANCHOR vision for a network of land anchors that establish connectivity and support landscape resiliency across North America.
USDA’s Working Lands for Wildlife (WLFW) Northern Bobwhite, Grassland, and Savannas Framework initially developed ANCHOR as a pilot project across 25 states. Collaborating with researchers from Conservation Science Partners and the University of Georgia’s GAME Lab, the team generated connectivity models for Eastern grasslands and savannas across the range of Northern Bobwhite. It soon became apparent that the ANCHOR approach could be replicated across North America to advance landscape conservation in a novel way.
LOOKING FORWARD
With the successful demonstration of the ANCHOR approach through the pilots, next steps begin with establishing formal partnerships among federal and state agencies to identify, manage, and connect high quality anchor sites to build a land conservation network. Partnerships support both the conservation delivery and science aspirations of ANCHOR.
Our vision is that ANCHOR will evolve to use a systems approach that incorporates economic indicators, climate science, and social sciences. Through these ongoing collaborations, ANCHOR will reconnect our broken landscapes to stabilize biodiversity losses and reduce environmental risks that impact working landscapes and under-served communities.
For more information on the ANCHOR approach or to become a partner contact:
Bridgett Estel Costanzo, USDA WLFW Regional Coordinator
Bridgett.Costanzo@usda.gov; version 1 released August 2024.
ANCHOR Partners (To Date)
