Wally Taylor is the Legal Chair of the Sierra Club Iowa chapter.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources has drafted the 2025 update of Iowa’s Wildlife Action Plan. The plan shapes how we protect wildlife, restore habitat, and ensure healthy ecosystems for the next decade in Iowa. This post explains why that’s important, and how to encourage the state to follow its plan.

What’s a Wildlife Action Plan?

In order to receive federal funding for wildlife programs, each state is required to prepare a wildlife action plan, outlining the steps needed to conserve wildlife and habitat before they become too rare and costly to restore.

States must update their wildlife action plan every ten years. There are eight required elements:

1. Information on distribution and abundance of wildlife in the state, including low and declining populations

2. Information on wildlife habitats in the state

3. Description of problems adversely affecting species of greatest conservation need

4. Description of conservation actions necessary to conserve species of greatest conservation need and their habitats

5. Provisions for monitoring conservation efforts

6. Reviewing progress toward these goals every ten years

7. Coordination among all relevant agencies

8. Public participation in developing the wildlife action plan

What’s in Iowa’s 2025 plan?

The 2025 Iowa Wildlife Action Plan does a very good job of describing the history and current status of Iowa’s land and wildlife. It includes several important improvements. It adds new groups to the Species of Greatest Conservation Need list, including plants, bumble bees, additional moths, and updates many existing species groups, such as fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, butterflies, mussels, and more.

The plan also upgrades the land cover data used to map habitat, incorporates ten more years of monitoring data, reflects updated status of endangered species, and aligns the plan with modern conservation frameworks like the Conservation Measures Partnership’s Open Standards.

Iowa is the most biologically altered state in the nation. Over the years, many species have become extinct here or are now in jeopardy. Habitat is also greatly reduced–prairies, woodlands, and wetlands are only a fraction of what they once were.

As the Iowa legislature said in 1989, in the preamble to the Resource Enhancement and Protection Act, “The state of Iowa has lost ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent of its prairies, ninety-eight percent of its wetlands, eighty percent of its woodlands, fifty percent of its topsoils, and more than one hundred species of wildlife since settlement in the early 1800’s.”

Iowa’s Wildlife Action Plan states the following goal: “Iowa will have healthy ecosystems that incorporate diverse, native habitats capable of sustaining viable wildlife populations” by 2030. The plan incorporates several concepts to accomplish that goal.

There are five strategies for Iowa’s wildlife.

1. Develop scientifically reliable knowledge on the distribution, relative abundance, and ecological needs of all wildlife species.

2. Develop a balanced program of wildlife conservation by increasing the emphasis on species of greatest conservation need.

3. Focus on protection, restoration, reconstruction, connection, and enhancement of native plant communities and wildlife habitats.

4. Restore viable wildlife populations to suitable habitats through informed relocation and reintroduction programs.

5. Develop methods to identify and reduce economic and social conflicts between wildlife and citizens.

There are also five strategies for wildlife habitats.

1. Identify habitats, landscapes, and travel corridors important to species of greatest conservation need in all regions of the state.

2. Permanently protect, restore, reconstruct, and enhance large public and private areas of wildlife habitats.

3. Ensure that long-term federal and state land conservation programs meet the needs of landowners and wildlife on privately owned lands and waters.

4. Provide technical guidance and supplemental cost share programs to private landowners to maximize the benefits to wildlife from Federal and State land conservation programs.

5. Coordinate public land acquisition and private land habitat programs to provide habitat on a landscape scale.

Another five strategies address wildlife management.

1. Identify habitats, landscapes, and travel corridors important to species of greatest conservation need in all regions of the state.

2. Permanently protect, restore, reconstruct, and enhance large public and private areas of wildlife habitats.

3. Ensure that long-term federal and state land conservation programs meet the needs of landowners and wildlife on privately owned lands and waters.

4. Provide technical guidance and supplemental cost share programs to private landowners to maximize the benefits to wildlife from federal and state land conservation programs.

5. Coordinate public land acquisition and private land habitat programs to provide habitat on a landscape scale.

How to turn the plan into real-world progress

The Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club supports these updates and appreciates the plan’s thorough description of Iowa’s wildlife, their habitats, and broad conservation strategies. But the plan still falls short in one key area: it does not grapple with the real-world challenges that prevent progress.

For decades, the Iowa legislature has debated reducing the DNR’s ability to protect or expand public land, even though Iowa has one of the lowest amounts of public habitat in the nation. Likewise, many private landowners face economic pressures or concerns about property rights that make adding habitat difficult.

Without addressing these political and social barriers, including the need for better funding, stronger partnerships, and broader engagement with agricultural and landowner organizations, the plan risks remaining a vision, rather than a roadmap. To create real change, we must put action into the Wildlife Action Plan.

One of the most important actions all of us can take is to contact our legislators and ask them to:

● Fully fund the DNR, particularly the Natural Resource Division.

● Encourage and ensure that the DNR follows its Wildlife Action Plan.

● Fully fund the Resource Enhancement and Protection program at $20 million.

● Implement the Natural Resources Trust Fund by raising the 3/8 cent sales tax that is “for the purposes of protecting and enhancing water quality and natural areas in this State, including parks, trails, and fish and wildlife habitat, and conserving agricultural soils in this State.”

All of us should care about Iowa’s natural heritage.