Wildlife Management Institute Outdoor News Bulletin December 2025
A Moment of Alignment: Linking SWAPs and NFWF’s 30-Year Vision
As NFWF launches its first NextGen Business Plan, states have a timely chance to align their wildlife action plans with long-term, large-scale investment and influence conservation for decades to come.
At a time when conservation challenges are expanding faster than the capacity to meet them, a unique opportunity has emerged, one that connects the next generation of State Wildlife Action Plans (SWAPs) with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s (NFWF) new 30-year NextGen Business Plans. This alignment offers an opportunity to link state-led conservation priorities with large-scale investment strategies that can shape the course of wildlife conservation for decades ahead.
Innovative Partnering for Private Lands in America
For decades the story has been the same: a species slides toward the brink, the federal government lists it under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and suddenly millions of acres of private land become a regulatory minefield. Farmers, ranchers, and forest owners, people who often care deeply about the wildlife on their property, are told they must now secure a federal permit if they want certainty that routine operations or even beneficial habitat work won't trigger fines, lawsuits, or land-use restrictions.
