In the spirit of the season which includes best wishes for the year—and years—to come, the Conservation Registry now includes fields addressing climate change.

1. Actions
If greenhouse gas offsets are part of your project, go to the Actions tab, select the category “Enhanced Conservation Status”, sub-category “Conservation / Mitigation Banks” and select “Greenhouse gas offsets.”

2. Goals and Targets
Under the Goals and Targets tab, the checklist which asks your primary motivation for the project now includes Climate Change Adaptation and Ecological Carbon Sequestration as choices. On the same page, the next question asks if your project is consistent with a plan, and Climate Change Strategy is given as one of your choices.

3. Quick Searches on the Home page
A new series of Quick Searches on the Registry’s home page feature those projects that have specified climate change activities.

If you want to update your project information with our new climate change options, please do so!

Let us know what you think constitutes a climate change adaptation/conservation project with your comment below.

The Conservation Registry went live this week with two new map layers integrated into the Registry’s Mapping Tool.

Bird Conservation Regions map layer
The Bird Conservation Regions were developed by a mapping team from the U.S., Canada and Mexico. These are ecologically distinct regions in North America with similar bird communities, habitats, and resource management issues. The resulting map is a systematic and scientific tool which assists organizations such as the Joint Ventures in delivering integrated bird conservation (see the Pacific Coast Joint Venture’s portal in the Registry for more information about the Joint Ventures).

Congressional Districts map layer
The second map layer is a nationwide congressional districts layer which has been part of the Registry development calendar since the beginning. Together these two map layers add depth to the suite of tools Registry users can utilize for national—even international—conservation decision making.

Visit the Mapping Tool to find out which Bird Conservation Region or congressional district your project is in.

Advanced Searches
All congressional districts and Bird Conservation Regions are searchable in the Advanced Search feature. Using this tool, users can search for conservation actions, species, organizations, keywords or any other condition that occurs within a particular region or district. The data generated by this search can be mapped or downloaded in a variety of formats including csv, XML and shapefile.

More Advanced Searches: Watersheds
Registry staff also went the extra mile to make the watershed location parameter searchable. Now users can make very targeted geographic searches with this common geospatial attribute.