One of the tools being used to foster implementation in BCRs is the concept of focus areas, which are geographically explicit areas supporting general habitat characteristics preferred by priority birds. Focus areas are not the only areas within a BCR that provide basic habitat needs for priority species but are geographic areas that have been identified by the bird conservation community as areas of high conservation potential because of their biological attributes at the landscape scale. The Piedmont bird focus areas were defined by staff of partner agencies and organizations during the Piedmont workshops held in October and December 2012. Criteria developed for designating waterfowl focus areas have been adopted for use in defining other bird focus areas within the Piedmont. These are:

1. Focus areas are regionally important to one or more life history stages or seasonal- use periods,

2. Focus areas are developed within the context of landscape-level conservation and biodiversity,

3. Focus areas are made up of discrete and distinguishable habitats or habitat complexes demonstrating clear ornithological importance. The boundaries are defined using ecological factors such as wetlands and wetland buffers, etc., and

4. Focus areas are large enough to supply all the necessary requirements for survival during the season for which it is important, except where small, disjunct areas are critical to survival and a biological connection is made, such as areas used by migrating shorebirds (Steinkamp 2008).

The focus areas depicted in this plan should be considered an initial draft set for the Piedmont and will need to be periodically revised as new tools become available to aid in conservation site selection (see DSL below). The process used to generate focus areas has important limitations that should be understood by anyone using the maps or lists in this plan. The determination of focus areas is biased in terms of taxonomic groups, habitats, jurisdictions, existing knowledge, and the people reviewing and selecting focus areas. Not all bird experts in the region attended the workshops where lines were drawn on maps, and some geographic areas and species groups were better represented than others. No attempt was made to verify the importance of each focus area identified or to rank them or quantify their relative contributions to different bird species or groups.

Over the long-term model-based approaches should be used for widely distributed species to determine the most suitable habitats across the landscape to focus conservation efforts. For this plan Forest Bird, Grassland Bird, Waterfowl, and Potential Waterbird and Shorebird Focus Area maps are presented. All of these maps and associated data can be obtained from the ACJV website.