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State Wildlife Action Plan

A Conservation Legacy for Californians

 

California's SWAP 2025 is now available! 

California’s distinctive topography and climate have given rise to a remarkable diversity of habitats that support a multitude of plant and animal species. In fact, California has more species than any other state in the U.S. and has the greatest number of species that occur nowhere else in the world. Many of the places where wildlife thrive are the same as those valued for recreation and other human activities. To ensure a sustainable future for wildlife – and the enjoyment of wildlife by generations to come – there is a need for a collaborative approach to conservation.

California’s State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP 2025) examines the health of wildlife and prescribes actions to conserve wildlife and vital habitat before they become more rare and more costly to protect. The plan also promotes wildlife conservation while furthering responsible development and addressing the needs of a growing human population. SWAP 2025 is a guide for collaborative conservation that benefits all Californians.

SWAP 2025 Information

SWAP 2025
SWAP Factsheet (PDF)
SWAP FAQ

Additional Resources

State Wildlife Grant Program

In 2000, Congress created the State Wildlife Grant (SWG) program, recognizing the need to fund programs for the conservation of wildlife diversity. Congress mandated each state and territory to develop a SWAP by 2005 and that it provides a comprehensive wildlife conservation strategy. An approved SWAP enables states to receive federal funds through the SWG program.

CDFW uses State Wildlife Grant funds to develop and implement its SWAP to support wildlife conservation projects around the State. CDFW has received $71 million in federal funding since 2000. Funded projects must connect to the SWAP, whether it’s to benefit a species or to implement a SWAP goal, conservation target, or a conservation strategy.

To learn more about how your organization may be eligible to partner with CDFW on a SWG, visit the CDFW SWG page.

Conservation Data and Online Tools

CDFW has numerous online tools and databases that complement the information presented in SWAP 2025. Some of these resources:

BIOS

Visit BIOS and click on the “BIOS 6 Viewer (Public & Secure)” button. Then, enter “State Wildlife Action Plan” into the “Add Data: BIOS” search box at the top of the screen. The available GIS data includes SWAP province boundaries, aquatic targets, and terrestrial targets.

ACE

Areas of Conservation Emphasis (ACE) is a CDFW decision support tool that provides data and maps of biodiversity, connectivity, and significant habitats to help guide and inform conservation priorities in California. The ACE project synthesizes these complex data to provide measures of biodiversity that are easy to understand and readily available to the public through ACE Webmap Viewer.

CNDDB

The California Natural Diversity Database (CNDDB) is CDFW’s inventory of the status and locations of imperiled plants and animals in California. CNDDB’s goal is to provide the most current information available on the state’s most imperiled elements of natural diversity and to provide tools to analyze these data. CNDDB spatial data can be viewed on BIOS.

CWHR

The California Wildlife Habitat Relationships System (CWHR) contains life histories, geographic ranges, habitat relationships, and management information for 712 species and additional subspecies of amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals that occur in the state

Habitat Connectivity

The Statewide Terrestrial Connectivity Map, part of the CDFW ACE project, presents a high-level view of connectivity across the state. At the statewide scale, the Statewide Terrestrial Habitat Connectivity map is intended to support large-scale, ecosystem-based conservation plans like the SWAP.

Marine Data

The Marine Fisheries Data Explorer allows the public to explore reviewed and summarized California commercial landings data. This data is now available to fisheries managers in near real time.

The California Marine Species Portal provides searchable access to basic species information.

MarineBIOS is a catalog of spatial data and an interactive map built within CDFW's larger Biogeographic Information and Observation System (BIOS). It enables discovery, visualization, and sharing of marine and coastal spatial planning data collected by the CDFW’s Marine Region and other external sources.

California's marine protected area (MPA) monitoring and evaluation program tracks status and trends of marine populations, habitats, and ecosystems in order to understand how they change over time. The MPA Monitoring Data Portal shares monitoring data with California's coastal and ocean communities.

RADMAP

The Range and Distribution Mapping and Analysis Project (RADMAP) identifies, develops, and maintains species habitat models and range maps for use in conservation decision making, with a focus on imperiled plants and animals.

SWAP Map

View the SWAP province boundaries and Hydrologic Units (HUCs) boundaries on a CDFW SWAP Map (hosted on ArcGIS). These provinces and HUCs are discussed in Chapters 1 and 5 of the SWAP 2025.

Species of Greatest Conservation Need

SWAP 2025 identifies California’s Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN) and proposes conservation strategies to sustain the habitats they depend on. Over 1,400 SGCN were identified for SWAP 2025 (To be published on October 1, 2025). The SGCN list consists of species deemed to be the rarest, imperiled, and/or in highest need of conservation, as identified by CDFW.

Vegetation Classification and Mapping Program

The Vegetation Classification and Mapping Program (VegCAMP) supports the Survey of California Vegetation (SCV) by facilitating comprehensive, standardized field assessment and analyses of fine-scale vegetation communities across the state to develop California’s expression of the National Vegetation Classification System (USNVC).