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Performance Track’s National Habitat Challenge Goal
Restoring habitat is one of the most important ways to protect fish and wildlife. Habitat provides food, water, shelter and space for organisms to grow and survive. A healthy habitat can also provide ecological services to improve our water and clean our air. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) National Environmental Performance Track and the Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC) have worked together to develop a National Habitat Challenge Goal. While developing the goal, Performance Track also collaborated with several other groups, including the USDA National Agroforestry Center and World Conservation Union (IUCN).
What are challenge goals?
What is required to make a habitat challenge goal?
What does habitat restoration
or enhancement mean?
Why does my project need a third-party review?
Who can help me develop a habitat
project and/or conduct the review?
About other national challenge goals
What are challenge goals?
Performance Track challenge goals are designed to encourage members to set goals aimed at reducing their impacts to regional or national environmental priority areas. Unlike regular goals, challenge goals require members to commit to a minimum improvement. When a facility takes on a challenge goal, that single challenge goal may be counted as two environmental performance goals. The applicant then only has to make three future environmental goals rather than the standard four goals.
What is required to make a habitat challenge goal?
When we developed the criteria for the Habitat Challenge Goal, we took into consideration the importance of both the quality and quantity of habitat restored. To set a challenge goal, members must:
- Commit to enhance or restore at least 10 acres of land.
- The land may be located within the facility’s fence line and/or off-site.
- Develop a habitat improvement plan and receive written third-party assessment and on-site review of the plan.
- If the third-party review has been completed prior to selecting the habitat challenge goal, it must have taken place within the three years prior to application.
- If a plan has not been developed and assessed at time of setting this goal, it must be completed by the time the first annual performance report is submitted.
- An educational outreach component to this goal is encouraged, but not required.
What does habitat restoration or enhancement mean?
Restoring or enhancing habitat means ensuring adequate and appropriate sources of food, water, shelter and space, such as introduction of native plant species, removal of exotic and invasive plants or animals, creating riparian buffers, providing nesting habitat, and/or other such projects.
Why does my project need a third party review?
The third party assessment will confirm that the facility’s habitat improvement plan will, when executed, result in the enhancement or restoration of wildlife habitat and that the plan includes a system for documentation, monitoring, and periodic reviews of progress to ensure credibility. This provides assurance of success and that the quality of the improvements will be appropriate. Interested facilities are encouraged to contact their local habitat, watershed or wildlife organization in advance of submitting their application in order to ensure that the project will meet the criteria established by those organizations as well as the Performance Track Habitat Challenge Goal criteria.
Who can help me develop a habitat project and/or conduct the review?
Any qualified person, such as a wildlife biologist, or organization can help you with your plan and conduct the review. Certification through WHC’s Corporate Wildlife Habitat Certification/International Accreditation Program is one of many examples of third-party assessment and on-site review.
For additional information, ideas, and resources, please visit:
- Audubon International
- Ducks Unlimited
- National Wild Turkey Federation
- National Wildlife Federation and
its regional centers
- Partners in Flight
- State or University Extension Programs
- Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed
- U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program
- USDA National Agroforestry Center
- USDA NRCS Agricultural Wildlife Conservation Center (click on the Partnerships page for more resources or to find a Service Center).
- Wildlife Habitat Council
- World Conservation Union
For technical resources, please visit:
- Working Trees for
Communities (PDF) (6
pp., 862K), published by the National Agroforestry Center.
- Working Trees for
Water Quality (PDF)(6
pp., 1.0MB), published by the National Agroforestry Center.
- Working Trees for
Wildlife (PDF)(6
pp., 1.6MB), published by the National Agroforestry Center.
- National Biology Manual, Aquatic and Terrestrial Habitat Resources (PDF) (121 pp., 3.8MB), published by the USDA NRCS Agricultural Wildlife Conservation Center.
- National Biology Handbook, Aquatic and Terrestrial Habitat Resources (PDF) (8 pp., 323K), published by the USDA NRCS Agricultural Wildlife Conservation Center.
- Conservation
Partnerships (PDF) (12 pp., 198K),
published by the USDA NRCS Agricultural Wildlife
Conservation Center.
About other national challenge goals
Performance Track partnered with EPA’s Office of Water to offer a challenge goal for water use reduction, with the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response to create a challenge goal for Priority Chemicals reduction, and with EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation to launch a challenge goal for energy use reduction.