Land Use Planning Tools for Municipalities in New York State

This gallery of maps is intended to ​provide municipalities in the State of New York with freely available data ​on locally occurring natural resources and to support local leaders in local and regional land use planning. The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) created this gallery with support from the North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative (NALCC), an applied science and management collaborative working to address increasing land-use pressures and widespread resource threats and uncertainties amplified by a rapidly changing climate.  Among the roles of the NALCC is that of compiling, synthesizing, organizing, and making available information, data, science and tools developed by partners and partnerships and the LCC in scales and formats needed by partners.  This project is aimed specifically at bringing these regional science resources to the local level and demonstrating the ways in which they can be used by municipalities in New York State.  We created conservation profiles of several case study towns, chosen because of exemplary natural resources. For each town, we compiled information and associated maps highlighting (1) rare natural habitats and important features, (2) qualitative measures including ecological integrity, resilience, and connectivity, (3) and the ecological context and unique natural components of the town in comparison to the larger region.  The maps and underlying data used here allow for the same features to be mapped for any area of the State.  Our intention is that planning and town boards, developers, homeowners, and other local residents can reference these maps when considering local land use changes, allowing for more informed decisions to be made in regard to planning. Please follow links below to look at the conservation profiles for case study towns and technical guidance on how these datasets can be accessed and used.