As you may have read in my blog last month, workshops to review Blueprint 2024 are coming this fall, following the official release in mid-October! Based on feedback from past attendees, we’ve changed the timing of workshops this year, so you’ll be reviewing the final version instead of a draft. That means you’ll have all the indicator data and documentation readily available to inform your review, and your feedback will start shaping the 2025 Blueprint update.

Check out the workshop page to learn more and register.

So, what’s new in this year’s Blueprint? This year’s update focused on the continental Southeast. The 2024 Blueprint uses refined prioritization methods and incorporates a number of new and improved indicators for inland and marine areas. Check out Rua’s blog from back in March to learn more about the improvements, and Hilary’s blog from June to learn more about the updated prioritization approach. We need your feedback on the latest priorities!

To that end, SECAS is hosting a series of 13 virtual workshops from October 22nd – November 7th to review Southeast Blueprint 2024 across the full SECAS geography. While the priorities in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are the same as they were in Blueprint 2023, last year’s workshops reviewed the Blueprint 2023 draft—so you’ll have the chance to review the final Caribbean priorities in a formal workshop for the first time.

Each workshop will last 1.5 hours, be hosted via Zoom, and focus on a different geography within the Southeast and U.S. Caribbean. You will have the opportunity to provide detailed, spatially explicit feedback on the Blueprint by zooming into areas that you know and capturing places that are represented well, overprioritized, or underprioritized–as well as places that you just have questions about.

To accommodate scheduling conflicts, each state and territory within the SECAS region will be covered by at least two workshops. You’re welcome to choose whichever geography (or geographies plural!) aligns best with your area of interest or expertise. Just keep in mind that each workshop will cover the same information, so you don’t need to come to, say, both workshops for Texas—unless you want to. If you work broadly across the whole Southeast, or have knowledge of many disparate areas within the Southeast, the SECAS regionwide workshop may a good fit.

The input we gather will help ensure the Blueprint represents on-the-ground conditions and captures the priorities of the broader conservation community. It also helps us as staff prioritize future improvements. As a living plan, the Blueprint is always a work in progress, so it’s great to hear firsthand from experts and Blueprint users which “known issues” are most important to fix first!

Invitations have already gone out to the 1,800+ people who have participated in the development of the Southeast Blueprint over the years or were recommended as reviewers—but anyone is welcome.

And of course, workshops are free! Please feel free to spread the word with folks who might be interested! If you have questions, contact me at hilary_morris@fws.gov.

Here’s the link to the workshop page one more time: http://secassoutheast.org/workshops. Hope to see you there!