Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department is pleased to share Mapping Vermont’s Natural Heritage, a guide for municipal and regional planners. This guide supplements the work of the Department’s Community Wildlife Program, which offers technical assistance and support to communities seeking conservation strategies for Vermont’s species, habitats, and the networks of land and water that support our natural resources. Because every community has a different set of resources to work with, and because the goals and values of every community require a different set of solutions, this guide was created to empower communities with the information and resources necessary to find conservation strategies that work for them.
If you would like a hard copy of the guide, please contact jens.hilke@vermont.gov. You can also download the entire guide here, or see one chapter at a time with the links below.
The guide starts with an Introduction and is accompanied by a seven map set that has been compiled for every town in Vermont. Create these maps on BioFinder, or you can download pdfs formatted for each town in Vermont below.
SEE the seven map set for every town in Vermont (Click on your town to link to the maps!)
Part I describes the datasets found on the seven maps, along with ideas for how to use these datasets for planning or conservation.
Map 1: Conservation Base Map
Map 2: Land Cover
Map 3: Forest Pattern
Map 4: Physical Features
Map 5: Water
Map 6: Community and Species Scale Wildlife Resources
Map 7: State and Regional Priorities
Advanced Natural Resources Inventory
Part II offers a step by step approach for determining which locations in a community are most important to conserve and then finding conservation strategies appropriate for the community.
Determining the Ecological Context (Steps 1-3)
Including Community Values (Steps 4-5)
Developing and Choosing Options (Steps 6-7)
The guide ends with an Appendix--a chart of all map components and their associated conservation strategies--and a Glossary.
Appendix: Strategies and Components