Corridors are an unequivocal need if wildlife are to survive the combined threats of habitat fragmentation and habitat shifts due to climate change this century. Corridor conservation, regardless of scale, requires the best-available science, spatial information, cross-sector collaboration, and story-telling to inspire a broad constituency to support wildlife corridor management and protection. The Corridor Commons fills all these needs by providing a clearinghouse of wildlife corridor information, including maps and data, the inspiring stories of conservation in action, and opportunities for citizen engagement. As such, the Corridor Commons is a centralized resource for agencies, non-profits, and businesses developing strategic partnerships to enhance wildlife corridor conservation. Building upon an initial coarse-grained map representing terrestrial, avian, freshwater and marine corridors across the continent, subsequent efforts will result in increasingly comprehensive and fine-scaled mapping and analysis, offering a continental vision for corridor conservation and the opportunity for a suite of new analyses to look at threats, priorities, climate change impacts, and ecological and evolutionary implications of a network of wildlife corridors across North America. In addition to mapping wildlife corridors, the Corridor Commons is amassing the conservation stories told by Witness for Wildlife. This growing and powerful community of citizen naturalists is dedicated to chronicling and protecting
Results/Conclusions
This approach recognizes that as we move forward to address major conservation challenges, the use of personal narratives to communicate among people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives is as important as comprehensive data based on the best-available science as we strive to implement effective corridor conservation strategies and policies.