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Recovery On-Line Activity Reporting (ROAR) Public Reports:
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How do I get information on a particular species?
A wide range of information for threatened, endangered, candidate, and other at risk
species is available at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) Endangered Species
website, http://www.fws.gov/endangered/.
In the upper left hand corner of each page of our website, above the main navigation bar,
there is a search field. Type in the name of the species you are interested in (or part of a
name, like “butterfly”), make sure the "Species" radio button is selected, and click the
“Search” button. On the next page, you will see a list of all the species that match your search
criteria. In that list, the species’ scientific name will be underlined and clickable. Click on
the name of the species you want, and the next page will bring you to a “Species Profile” page,
where you can find information on taxonomy, appearance, range, listing status, and other
information under the topical headings of Federal Register Documents, Recovery, Critical
Habitat, Conservation Plans, Petitions, Life History, and Other Resources. Each species’
profile is set up using the same format, but the amount of information for each species varies.
The Endangered Species website also provides information about, and links to, our
Candidate Conservation, Listing, Consultation, and Recovery programs and the policies
and tools we use to work with our partners to conserve and recover at-risk and listed
species. While you are exploring our website, be sure to check out the links for
Homework Help, Endangered Species Bulletin, and Partnerships in Conservation.
2. What recovery actions are being implemented for a particular species?
The Service works with our partners to develop and implement recovery plans that help
increase species’ populations and manage the threats to their existence. Recovery plans
identify site specific management actions that, if completed, could lead to reclassification
to a less critical status or help them recover to the point they can be removed from
Endangered Species Act protection. You can see a description of a species’ recovery
actions and the status of implementing those actions in two ways.
The first way to find this information is to look at the recovery section of a Species
Profile page (as described above in question 1). If a species has a recovery plan (some
are still being developed), the plan’s title, date, and status will be displayed in the Current
Recovery Plan(s) box. Clicking the plan’s title will bring up a copy of the plan in pdf
format in a separate window, where you can read all about the species’ recovery needs.
You can also view the plan’s recovery action implementation status by clicking the View
Implementation Progress link in the Current Recovery Plan(s) box. Clicking this link will
open a separate internet browser window where you will be presented with a report with
a list of recovery actions and associated information. See the export options in the top
right hand corner of the report for downloading and printing. The report will also have
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the name and contact information for the Service’s field office responsible for
implementing the plan.
The second way to find a species’ recovery plan information is to access the list of
species with recovery plans directly from our website. You can view the plans in order
by species’ taxonomic groups or in order of date:
http://ecos.fws.gov/tess_public/TESSWebpageRecovery?sort=1
http://ecos.fws.gov/tess_public/TESSWebpageRecovery?sort=2
Follow the instructions above to view either the recovery plan pdf file or the View
Implementation Progress report.
3. How do I find out about recovery activities that I can help with?
There is a variety of information associated with each recovery plan action, including a
field called “Labor Type.” Labor Type refers to how the action will be implemented.
There are seven Labor Types, including “Volunteer.” To find out which species have
recovery actions that can be implemented using volunteers, use our Recovery Plan
Information Search query, which pulls information from all available recovery plans in
our Recovery Online Activity Reporting (ROAR) database.
You can access the query from the recovery section of a Species Profile page (described
above) by clicking on the blue Recovery Plan Information Search link or directly from
this link:
https://ecos.fws.gov/roar/pub/ConfigureRecActionReport.do?path=ROAR%20Custom%
20Queries.Public%20Actions%20AdHoc
Once on the query page, you will see a list of all the fields you can use to search for
information. The more fields you fill in, the narrower your results will be. To search for
recovery actions from all plans that can use volunteer labor, leave all the fields blank or
with their default settings as you scroll down the page until you see the Labor Type field
box. Using your cursor, scroll down in the field box until you see “volunteer”; click on
the word volunteer and it will turn blue to indicate that it has been selected. Continue to
scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will see Display Options that allows you
to customize how the results will be displayed on the report. For this search, click on the
boxes to the right of the bolded “General species information” and “Recovery action
information” lines, and below, in the Sorting Options box, click on Plan Title so that your
report results will be grouped by actions within the same recovery plan. Finally, click the
Run Report button at the very end of the page.
While your report is running, you may see a pop-up Security Information window that
warns that the page contains secure and non-secure items and asks if you wish to display
the non-secure items; click the yes button. The search results will be displayed on screen.
At the top of the screen, you will see your search criteria and how many items meet those
criteria and the number of pages those items are displayed. You will also see in the upper
right hand side of the screen two options (Excel and XML) for downloading your report
for ease of sorting and printing. The onscreen report will show you which plans and
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actions have been designated with the volunteer labor type. Each plan has a lead field
office, and the contact name and phone number for that office is displayed in your report
so that you can contact them for further information. Not all recovery actions have been
designated with Labor Types yet. It is possible that more volunteer opportunities will be
identified, so please check back to this report again in the future.
4. How do I find out which organizations are engaged in recovering species?
Each recovery plan identifies the organizations that are most likely to help us implement
actions to recover species. These groups of organizations are called the plan’s
“responsible parties.” To view the parties responsible for a specific recovery plan, locate
the recovery plan by following the steps in Questions 1 and 2 above. Responsible parties
are identified in a column with that heading in the View Implementation Progress report.
To see which plans and actions a particular organization is identified as a responsible
party for, use the Recovery Plan Information Search discussed under Question 3 above.
Once on the query page, scroll down until you see the Responsible Parties box. Because
these are actual parties identified in hundreds of recovery plans, the box contains a very
long list (several thousand names), and an organization might be entered more than once
with a slightly different name (ex., Arizona State Park vs. Arizona State Park Board). It
might be easier to identify your party by first clicking on the blue “View All Parties” link
below the search box to bring up an exportable and printable list. Once you’ve identified
your party or parties, it will be easier to find them in the search box. You can select
multiple parties by holding down the Ctrl key while clicking on the party names. Once
you’ve selected your parties, follow the instructions above in Question 3 for displaying
and viewing your search results.
5. Who do I contact for more information about a particular species?
The Species Profile page (see Question 1 above) identifies the Lead Region at the top of
the page. The Lead Region name is a clickable link that will bring you to the Regions’
webpage, which will include contact information. If you are viewing recovery plan
action information using either the View Implementation Progress or Recovery Plan
Information Search described in Questions 2-4 above, the contact name and phone
number for the plan’s Lead Field Office are included in the reports.
