Virginia is an incredibly diverse state. While supporting nearly 9 million people, Virginia’s landscape provides hundreds of habitat types that support tens of thousands of wildlife species. Throughout Virginia’s history, these wildlife and habitat resources have provided sustenance, economic benefits, icons, and recreational opportunities that contribute to community wellbeing, individual quality of life, and cultural identity.
Read Virginia‘s 2025 Wildlife Action PlanOver the last century, Virginia’s habitats have become increasingly impaired, impacting both wildlife and people. While Virginia’s conservation community has successfully restored many imperiled species, including white-tailed deer, Canada geese, and bald eagles, many habitats and the species they support continue to decline. At the time of this writing, over 130 species have been classified as being either threatened or endangered in Virginia. Efforts to restore critically imperiled species are often expensive, contentious, and biologically challenging. Limited budgets, habitat loss and change, and an increasingly diverse suite of interests require Virginia’s conservation community to reconsider its work; to become more collaborative and proactive. It is no longer sufficient to ask, “How do we restore endangered species?” Rather, the conservation community must ask, “How do we keep species from becoming endangered?” Virginia’s Wildlife Action Plan presents a strategy to help restore imperiled and declining species and to keep more common species common, while also providing benefits to Virginia’s human communities.
The updated Wildlife Action Plan identifies 1920 Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN) that are ranked by their relative degree of imperilment and an additional 520 Assessment Priority species for which there is not enough information at this time to determine an accurate tier ranking. Habitat loss is the single greatest challenge impacting many of these species. This Plan, through the online tool, presents habitats by twelfth-order watersheds and the SGCN that occur in those watersheds. In addition, threats to species and habitats, including ones of anthropogenic origin (e.g., poaching, illegal trade, light pollution) are identified. Conservation actions are outlined for each watershed, and others that may be applicable to species or habitats regardless of geography have also been included. The Wildlife Action Plan documents existing programs that address threats or define best management practices, as well as data that could be used to document and evaluate the success of conservation actions. Finally, the updated Wildlife Action Plan describes climatic trends that have been projected for Virginia and identifies actions that can be taken to conserve wildlife and habitats under those changing conditions.
Virginia’s Wildlife Action Plan was updated with significant input from Virginia’s conservation community. Substantial efforts were also made to obtain feedback from the sovereign tribal nations, state-recognized tribes, and the general public.
It is hoped that this updated Action Plan will help Virginians, in all areas, to expand and enhance existing partnerships, develop new partnerships, direct the use of existing conservation resources toward priority areas and problems, bring new resources to bear, and help the Commonwealth acquire or develop new human and financial resources to address these important conservation issues.
Read Virginia‘s 2025 Wildlife Action Plan