State Wildlife Action Plan
Kansas' State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP) provides a comprehensive vision for managing Kansas' wildlife and their habitats. The United States Congress created the State Wildlife Grants program in 2002 after a coalition of conservation organizations worked to keep species from becoming endangered by increasing state and federal funding for wildlife conservation.
State Wildlife Grants are funds that can be used for wildlife conservation and enables the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks to fund necessary studies and projects, to keep rare species from becoming listed as threatened or endangered, and to keep common species from declining. As a requirement to be eligible for State Wildlife Grant funds, Congress charged each state and territory with developing an approved SWAP.
The Kansas SWAP was developed to be a dynamic, adaptive document that would guide agency and partner conservation planning for years to come. The SWAPs are reviewed and revised at least every 10 years. The Kansas SWAP underwent a comprehensive revision completed in 2025. The revisions considered many of the changes that Kansas and its wildlife have experienced since the original plan was created in 2005. It is important to note that the SWAP is not just a conservation plan for KDWP, but a wildlife conservation plan for the state of Kansas. Collaboration with other agencies, organizations, stakeholders, experts, interested parties, and public participation was requested throughout the revision process, and these partnerships will continue to be valuable in the implementation of the SWAP.
The 2025 SWAP was approved by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in March 2026.
You can view or download the full plan below, along with individual chapters for easier navigation, Ecological Focus Area shapefiles, and collapsed habitat category shapefiles.
Documents
- Ecological Focus Area Shapefiles
- Collapsed Habitat Categories
Title, Executive Summary & Table of Contents- Ch.1-Introduction & Purpose
- Ch.2-Statewide & Regional Perspective
- Ch.3-Priority, Species & Habitats
- Ch.4-Ecological Focus Areas
- Ch.5-Cimarron Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.6-Kansas-Lower Republican Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.7-Lower Arkansas Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.8-Marais des Cygnes Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.9-Missouri Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.10-Neosho Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.11-Smoky Hill Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.12-Upper Arkansas Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.13-Upper Republican Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.14-Verdigris Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.15-Walnut Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.16-Arikaree Breaks Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.17-Arkansas River Sandsage Prairie Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.18-Chautauqua Hills Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.19-Cheyenne Bottoms Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.20-Cimarron Grasslands Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.21-Eastern Forest Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.22-Eastern Tallgrass Prairie Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.23-Flint Hills Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.24-Ozark Plateau Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.25-Playa Landscape Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.26-Quivira Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.27-Red Hills Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.28-Smoky Hills Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.29-Western River Breaks Ecological Focus Area
- Ch.30-Plan to Review and Monitoring
- Ch.31-Acknowledgements and Citations
- Complete 2025 Kansas Statewide Wildlife Action Plan
- Appendices
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They can be downloaded by clicking on the icons below.
This page will be periodically updated as products are produced.
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