English 
Español In 2006, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) leadership endorsed Strategic Habitat Conservation (SHC) as the conservation approach the agency would use to achieve its mission. SHC uses an adaptive management framework to focus on a subset of shared conservation targets, set measurable biological objectives for them, and identify the information, decisions, delivery, and monitoring needed to achieve desired biological outcomes.
As the next step in using the SHC framework, the FWS is working with diverse partners to develop guidance for a standardized process and criteria for defining biological outcomes via a surrogate species approach. A surrogate species is one that is used to represent other species or aspects of the environment. These species can then be used for conservation planning that supports multiple species and habitats within a particular landscape of geographic area, reducing the burden of addressing the requirements of many species individually.
The FWS has released draft guidance for selecting species (below). Stay tuned for news about regional workshops and ways that you or your organization can be involved in these efforts.
Learn more
• Selecting species and conservation targets.
• Short podcasts about surrogate species, SHC, and how the associated concepts are connected.