AppGeo will work collaboratively with the Western Governors’ Wildlife Council (WGWC) to design, build and then host a regional viewer for crucial habitat and corridors across the western United States, called the Crucial Habitat Assessment Tool (CHAT) regional viewer. The vision for the regional viewer resulted from the CHAT initiative of the WGWC.
As quoted in the WGWC press release on the award: “We are excited about this step in the development of CHAT,” said John Harja, Senior Policy Analyst in Utah’s Public Lands Policy Coordination Office and Chair of the WGWC. “The regional viewer application will allow the public and decision makers to better include state priorities for fish and wildlife in the earliest stages of the planning process, particularly for energy and transportation.”
“We at AppGeo are equally excited to have been selected by the WGWC for this important project for western states,” said Michael Terner, Executive Vice President of Applied Geographics and Principal in Charge for the project. “It is a perfect match to our mission of helping organizations make their spatial data accessible and useful to the broadest possible audiences through online applications.”
The project scope is to present data in a consistent manner across 16 western states, enabling the viewing of resources, habitats, and wildlife corridors that cross state lines. The regional viewer will complement state-level CHAT websites that have already been launched successfully by several western states and groups of states.
Image Source: WGA Crucial Habitat Assessment Tools webpage