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33 <br /> To identify the indicator species and habitat guilds known to occur in the project area, species occurrence <br /> data were compiled from several sources: <br /> • NCNHP's List of Rare Animal Species of North Carolina(Ratcliffe 2018) <br /> • NCWRC's SGCN list for the Eastern Piedmont(NCWRC 2015) <br /> • A database compiled by Hall(2017 unpublished) from various sources,including the NCNHP <br /> county inventories,the NC State Parks Natural Resources Inventory Database(NRID) (NC <br /> Division of Parks and Recreation 2015), and additional field work <br /> • Species Element Occurrence data from NCNHP for the project area(NCNHP 2019a) <br /> • Observation data from the Piedmont Wildlife Center(2018 unpublished), located in the City of <br /> Durham adjacent to the New Hope Creek corridor. <br /> • Observations by Eno-New Hope Landscape Conservation Group members,Allison Weakley <br /> (Town of Chapel Hill) (2018)and Deborah Fowler(Wake County) (through 2017) <br /> • Observations by a number of individuals as recorded on iNaturalist(iNaturalist.org 2019), an <br /> online platform for sharing species observations by date and geographic location,which can be <br /> curated,verified, and used as citizen science data inputs in scientific research projects. <br /> The SGCN list(NCWRC 2015)does not contain specific location data but provides a list of species <br /> known to occur in the Eastern Piedmont of NC. County-level occurrence lists for NCNHP's rare and <br /> watch list animal species (Ratcliffe 2018) are available(https://www.ncnhp.org/data/species-communiiy- <br /> search). These two species lists were combined, and inconsistent species taxonomy was corrected. This <br /> combined species list was used to filter all available georeferenced species occurrences (from the <br /> additional sources listed above)within the project area boundary(with a 5-km buffer),yielding a list of <br /> SGCN,rare, and watch list animal species known to occur in the project area. The final species list <br /> included only terrestrial species known to occur in the project area within the last 30 years and with year- <br /> round resident populations in the project area. Classification of species into habitat guilds followed the <br /> classification designated by Hall in his work on LHIG (Hall 2008,2009). <br /> Fifty-seven terrestrial wildlife species in more than 22 habitat indicator guilds were identified for the <br /> project area(Appendix Q.Based on the group's desire to identify specific corridor areas,the availability <br /> of spatial data for mapping habitat, and other methodological constraints, corridor analysis and mapping <br /> were limited to habitat types for three guilds. The three guilds broadly encompass wet-to-mesic(moist) <br /> hardwood forests (such as in Figure 9), dry-to-wet hardwood/mixed hardwood-pine forests, and sparsely <br /> settled forested areas,including some managed forests. Collectively,they include a total of 14 terrestrial <br /> wildlife indicator species, 8 of which are non-flying species and rely on ground-based habitat <br /> connectivity. <br /> Figure 9.Riparian hardwood forest along the Eno River in North Carolina.Photo credit Kathy Lee. <br /> 20 A Landscape Plan for Wildlife Habitat Connectivity <br />