LIISMA staff and partners are developing a new strategic plan for invasive species from 2025 to 2030, and we’re looking for your ideas, insights, and strategies.
The planning process started earlier this year with analyzing LIISMA’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, commonly known as a SWOT analysis. Identified strengths include the high level of expertise and experience of staff and partners. Weaknesses include limited capacity and resources for managing invasive species across the region. Opportunities include reaching new audiences, including students through expanded teachers’ workshops and curricula. Threats include the range expansion of invasive species in response to climate change. The new strategic plan will address these and other challenges and opportunities.
Following the SWOT analysis, LIISMA staff emailed two survey questionnaires a few weeks apart to stakeholders on our e-mail lists. The first questionnaire, released in June, asked participants to list their highest invasive species priorities for the next five years. Thirty-nine participants listed various priorities, ranging from increased education and training, and prioritizing invasive species for management and conservation areas for protection, to strengthening collaborative partnerships among diverse governmental and non-governmental organizations.
The second questionnaire asked participants to rank 57 strategic ideas according to importance, urgency, and feasibility. The approach uses a modified group concept mapping methodology that organizes the group’s ideas and represents those ideas visually in a series of interrelated maps. LIISMA staff will consolidate and organize input from the questionnaires.
In November, the next step will be to engage key stakeholders further and refine strategies in one-on-one and small group meetings, ensuring that all needed perspectives are heard. This collaborative approach aims to refine strategies and prioritize the most important, urgent, and feasible strategies moving forward.
The strategic plan follows a “GSOT” framework. GSOT stands for goals, strategies, objectives, and tactics, as follows:
- Goals – The broad, overarching outcomes to achieve over the next five years. These are aligned with LIISMA’s mission and vision, providing direction and focus.
- Strategies – These define the approach LIISMA staff and partners will take to reach goals. Strategies outline the methods and pathways to achieve goals, often identifying key focus areas or broad initiatives. Strategies provide the “how” of achieving goals, guiding the selection of objectives.
- Objectives – These are specific, measurable steps or targets needed to implement strategies. Objectives break down the broader goals into actionable, time-bound tasks that guide long–term (five–year) efforts and performance tracking.
- Tactics – These are the specific long-term actions to achieve the objectives.
- Objectives – These are specific, measurable steps or targets needed to implement strategies. Objectives break down the broader goals into actionable, time-bound tasks that guide long–term (five–year) efforts and performance tracking.
- Strategies – These define the approach LIISMA staff and partners will take to reach goals. Strategies outline the methods and pathways to achieve goals, often identifying key focus areas or broad initiatives. Strategies provide the “how” of achieving goals, guiding the selection of objectives.
The LIISMA staff aims to submit the strategic plan to the Invasive Species Coordination Section, Division of Lands and Forests, at the New York State Department of Conservation (NYSDEC) for review and approval by the end of February.You can still submit ideas and strategies for the plan by emailing LIISMA at invasive@LIISMA.org, using the subject “Strategic Plan.”
