The State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP) has several ways of indicating wildlife community condition in California. One is the number and distribution of threatened and endangered (T&E) species, number and distribution of endemic species, and vulnerability of species to climate change, land-use, and other threats.

This indicator provides information on the area and extent of forest by ecosystem type, age class or successional stage protected to safeguard biological diversity and representative examples of forest ecosystem types. This indicator will also help identify forest types of conservation value that are in need of protection. The level of formal protection given to forests is a reflection of the importance society places on their conservation.

Invasions of non-indigenous species can threaten native biodiversity, ecosystem functions, animal and plant health, and human economies. Plant invasions are a serious threat to natural and managed ecosystems. The optimal solution regarding invasive and non-native species is to prevent the introduction of these species into the ecosystem. However, in many rangeland situations, this option has already been lost, and a system must be developed to manage invaded areas, monitor exotic organisms, and attempt to minimize their impacts on other ecosystems. The proposed indicator is designed to track the area of infestation and the presence or absence of invasive or nonnative species on rangeland over time.

Native forests are likely to provide the best quality habitat for native wildlife and plants. Forest fragmentation can limit wildlife movement/occupancy and ecological processes. This indicator reports on the fragmentation of native forests as a threat to native biodiversity.

This indicator provides information about the change in native plant cover between some past time period(s) and the current time. This is one proxy for the amount of major habitat types for biodiversity available over time.

Evaluate stream health and indirect watershed health. An index of biotic integrity (IBI) combines several metrics from stream monitoring data to evaluate overall stream health. The IBI index score has been shown to be correlated with different levels of human disturbance. Where data exists it can be evaluated against IBI scores for forested areas with unimpaired streams that serve as reference conditions.

This indicator will provide information in tabular, graphical, and map formats that integrates complex biological data into a single number that, together with reference condition information, indicates the degree of biological alteration or quality of a given water body. Maintaining high quality aquatic biological assemblages is very important to the public, and protecting those biota forms the basis for water quality standards. Although indirect or surrogate indicators are important, only biological indicators can directly assess biological condition.

Birds are a sensitive and visually-obvious indicator for landscape and habitat condition. Measuring distribution of different bird species can be a measure of ecosystem health.

Birds naturally vary in population size in an area. This could be due to condition variations in the area, or due to variations in some other area where the birds spend part of their time. Trends in population size of rare, listed, or common birds can provide important information about the habitat quality and biodiversity of a particular place or type of place.

This indicator will provide tabular and graphical information about forest vegetation. A forest vegetation map is also desirable, but such a map will be a product of future assessment work and not a product of this indicator. The composition, diversity, and structure of vascular plants are important factors in assessing biological diversity of forested ecosystems. Vegetation is the source of primary production and a primary determinant of habitat for many species.