Conservation Opportunity Areas (COA) are areas in the State considered to have superior potential for conserving SGCN. Like all other components of the State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP), COAs provide a non-regulatory tool to help focus and prioritize statewide actions to locations where conservation actions may maximize opportunities to prevent future listings of species, and to promote recovery of species that have already been listed. This landscape-level view of high biodiversity areas within New Mexico is not intended as a substitute for individual project decisions, or to preclude the need for site-specific assessments that may be considered in funding decisions by the Department and other resource managers. However, COAs can serve a vital function in prioritizing wildlife and habitat restoration efforts to the most critical wildlife needs within a state, as directed by the congressional language for the State Wildlife Grants (SWG) Program and its companion SWAPs.
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