Maryland’s Key Wildlife Habitats

The distribution and abundance of Maryland’s wildlife species are directly related to the condition and location of their habitats. While some species can be found in a variety of habitats, many are less adaptive and are restricted to one or relatively few habitats.  This is especially true for the rarest and most vulnerable wildlife species, including the wildlife species of Greatest Conservation Need (GCN identified for Maryland. These specific habitats, themselves, often exhibit a restricted distribution in Maryland. This distribution is influenced by the diversity of Maryland’s five major east-west physiographic provinces: Lower Coastal Plain, Upper Coastal Plain, Piedmont, Ridge and Valley, and Allegheny Plateau. Maryland’s latitude also supports the overlap of ranges for typically northern or southern species. Aquatic habitats also exhibit a wide range, from saline Atlantic Ocean and Coastal Bays, to brackish Chesapeake Bay estuary, to fresh water rivers and streams. This adds to Maryland’s wildlife and habitat diversity and also influences the somewhat limited distribution of certain wildlife species and their habitats.

Habitats that support GCN species are broadly referred to here as “key habitats”.  For Maryland’s Wildlife Diversity Conservation Plan, the concept of key habitats is being used to focus the conservation needs and actions for about 500 GCN species, as well as the full array of wildlife in the State that also occurs within those habitats. By taking the more holistic approach of working to protect and conserve key wildlife habitats, entire assemblages of species are conserved at the same time. Examples of key habitats include tidal marshes and floodplain forests.

While most key habitats are designed to be at the level of generalized, landscape-scale assemblages, the more restricted or vulnerable vegetative communities that support unique assemblages of plant and animal species are referred to as “rare natural communities”. Maryland DNR’s Natural Heritage Program tracks rare natural communities, as it does the individual rare plant and animal species, throughout the state.  These rare natural communities can also represent coarse-filter surrogates or umbrellas for little known wildlife species. This is particularly true for the thousands of invertebrate species that are poorly understood and studied. Identification and protection of these rare natural communities within key habitats can be an effective approach to conserving the full array of invertebrate wildlife.

Identification of Key Habitats

As with the identification of GCN species, Maryland’s draft list of key wildlife habitats was identified though input, analysis, and review by DNR staff, scientific experts, and various stakeholders. For coarse-filter planning, information from the existing standardized ecoregion and vegetative classification systems were used. This has resulted in an initial list of 35 key habitats important to wildlife in Maryland. Each key habitat usually contains more than one natural vegetative community that is similar in vegetative structure and characteristics in terms of wildlife habitat. However, some of the key habitats are primarily non-vegetated or are defined by attributes other than their vegetation.

Key Habitat Photographs, from top to bottom:

Tidal Hardwood Swamp, Chicamicamico River
Xeric Chestnut Oak Forest
Coastal Plain Bog
Floodplain Forest along the Potomac River
Maritime Dune Shrubland