The Louisiana-Mississippi Conservation Delivery Network serves to link the fundamental planning and design functions of the Lower Mississippi Valley Joint Venture partnership with the delivery programs of conservation partners by establishing a forum for cooperative coordination, leveraging, and targeting of their actions on-the-ground. In order to facilitate partner collaboration and foster coordinated delivery objectives of the Louisiana-Mississippi Conservation Delivery Network (CDN), its member participants recognized the need to develop an effective approach to identify and prioritize conservation actions in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley (MAV) portions of Louisiana and Mississippi. Numerous "priority conservation area" maps from various partners were reviewed and considered in relation to the broader CDN goals and objectives, but the great diversity of approach and scale across those pointed to the need for a more refined approach. To develop this approach, the CDN formed a Delivery Planning Working Group. The working group was charged with thoroughly assessing and evaluating available priority maps and models, and then with determining the most effective approach to developing a delivery planning tool. The Working Group ultimately settled on three such spatially-explicit conservation decision support models (DSMs) – 1) Ducks Unlimited’s Wetland Restoration Suitability Model, 2) the Forest Breeding Bird Reforestation Decision Support Model that was developed by the LMVJV Partnership, and 3) the Ducks Unlimited’s Easement Protection Priority Model. By combining these existing, spatially-specific conservation planning models, the CDN was able to take advantage of quality science and decision-support capabilities developed both individually and collectively by CDN partners. This approach allows the CDN to zero in on the highest priority areas identified by the various decision support systems and facilitate the targeting of the CDN’s actions to have the greatest impact for wetland conservation. 

More information, including operating guidelines, and prioritization tool development background and mapbook are availabale at: http://www.lmvjv.org/pages/CDNs/LA-MS_CDN.htm