State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP)

State Wildlife Action Plans (SWAPs) serve as the nation's framework for proactively conserving fish and wildlife to prevent species from precipitous declines. As the State of South Carolina’s wildlife agency, the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) is the entity charged with creating and updating the State’s SWAP. Led by a SWAP Coordinator and through rigorous taxa review by teams of scientists and other experts familiar with the State’s wildlife and plants, South Carolina’s latest iteration of the SWAP contains 1,772 Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN), including federal and state threatened and endangered species and other rare or declining species. Plans must address Eight Required Elements, including a public review process. Revisions are required at least every ten years. In 2005 and 2015, each state, territory, and the District of Columbia completed SWAPs for approval by the US Fish and Wildlife Service as a condition for receiving federal funding through the State and Tribal Wildlife Grants Program used to implement those Plans. This grant program is explained on the USFWS website at https://www.fws.gov/program/state-wildlife-grants. South Carolina, along with most other states and territories, completed the 2025 edition of the SWAP which can be found at the link below. The SWAPs describe the states’ landscapes, habitats important to SGCN, key threats, needed conservation actions, and research and monitoring plans.

Additionally, South Carolina’s Supplemental Volume: Species and Guild Accounts, contains a compilation of written accounts, each following a standardized format where the authors describe the species, their status, population size and distribution, habitat requirements, challenges faced, conservation accomplishments thus far, conservation recommendations for future action, and how to measure success. These accounts are arranged by single species or as guilds if several species share a common habitat.