Ecological connectivity is a broad concept that includes functional connectivity (e.g., genetic connectivity and seasonal migratory connectivity), structural connectivity (e.g. habitat connectivity), and indices identifying connectivity among “natural” areas (i.e. those that have minimal human development). The Ecological Connectivity Team approached the Secretary’s directive by conducting a literature search to identify datasets representing any of these types of connectivity at a large landscape scale, which we defined as reflecting a substantial portion of a species’ or population’s range or the continental United States. For species-specific datasets, the Team focused on mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians that are threatened, endangered, proposed, or candidate species under the Endangered Species Act, Forest Service Sensitive Species, and species that serve important cultural purposes (e.g., subsistence) or have terrestrial seasonal migrations. Species corridors included in this dataset are: Elk, Greater Sage Grouse, Grizzly Bear, Lesser Prairie Chicken, Lynx, Mexican Spotted Owl, Mule Deer, Pronghorn and Wolverine.

We don’t recommend collapsing these records together into a single layer. Major considerations in this recommendation include:

• The species represented in this dataset are severely biased by what has been studied, not all potential species of interest.

• Of these species, we do not have range-wide data (or even west-wide data) for most and regional coverage differs dramatically across each dataset.

• What we can conclude from each species’ dataset differs (e.g. some have just have corridor/ no-data while others also have a field for non-corridor).

• Each of these species has a different response to fire, meaning that presence of connectivity for each species could mean very different things for management decision-making.