The Nongame Conservation Section of Georgia DNR’s Wildlife Resources Division is charged with conserving nongame wildlife. Nongame means animals not legally hunted, fished for or trapped, as well as rare plants and natural habitats.

 

Our work at the Nongame Conservation Section, or NCS, is wide-ranging. It varies from studying southeastern American kestrels in the Fall Line sandhills to monitoring sea turtle nesting on barrier islands, from surveying the Toccoa River for rare fish to restoring habitat for a mint found worldwide only in south Georgia, and from encouraging appreciation of wildlife through the annual Youth Birding Competition to spreading news by Twitter of successful efforts to disentangle North Atlantic right whales from fishing gear.I hope through this report you gain a better understanding of that work and the value of conserving our state’s nongame wildlife.

 

During fiscal 2008 and 2009, the Nongame Conservation Section, or NCS, mapped coastal and sandhills habitats in regional projects, documented data on native animals from bats to bottlenose dolphins to improve species management, helped acquire more than 17,000 acres of priority habitat, and funded regional education centers that reached about 100,000 students.

 

These are only some of the highlights. The State Wildlife Action Plan, a comprehensive strategy for conserving Georgia’s biological diversity, guides all of our conservation actions.

 

That plan shows there are many conservation priorities. More than 1,000 of Georgia’s plant and animal species are considered species of conservation concern; 318 are listed as rare, unusual, threatened or endangered, and protected by law.

 

You – contributors to nongame conservation in Georgia – are critical to achieving those priorities. The Nongame Conservation Section receives no state general funds. We depend on your financial support, particularly through nongame license plate sales and the Give Wildlife a Chance state income tax checkoff.

 

Those contributions are leveraged with federal and other grants. For the period covered in this report, the ratio of Nongame Wildlife Conservation Fund expenditures used to match grants was 1-to-4, or 25 cents for every $1 in grants.

 

You can find out more in these pages, through our Web sites and e-newsletter, or by contacting us directly. Web links, addresses and telephone numbers are below.

 

Thank you for your support of Georgia’s nongame wildlife and rich natural heritage.

 

Mike Harris,

Chief

Nongame Conservation Section