Wildlife Management Units

The following information was taken from the DEC Master Habitat Databank GIS server. The data was downloaded and clipped to the 10-mile buffer of the Adirondack Park.

Geographic Data Set: Wildlife Management Units
Distribution Constraints: Contact the Habitat Inventory Unit of the Division of Fish, Wildlife and Marine Resources.
Description: This coverage shows management units for deer and other wildlife in New York. Wildlife management units are contained in the region subclass UNITS. WMU groupings to be used for season setting for small game and furbearers beginning with the 1999/2000 season are contained in the region subclass WMUGROUP. The polygons show bear units.
Available: Statewide
Completion or Most Recent Revision Date: 1 February 1999
Type of Data: Shapefile
Source of Information: Bob Sanford (Wildlife Services Team, Delmar) provided legal descriptions of the unit boundaries (with changes from the old DMU boundaries highlighted), and Regional wildlife staff provided DeLorme Atlases with the boundaries drawn for Regions 3-9. An older DeLorme Atlas prepared by John Palmateer (Big Game Unit, retired) that had been used in the preparation of previous Deer Management Unit (DMU) coverages was also referred to for boundaries that were not expected to change from existing DMU boundaries, and thus may not have been drawn in the new atlases from the Regions. Hunting and trapping season information or various species (used for PAT item coding related to various special map projects and for definition of WMU "group" boundaries) was provided by Gordon Batcheller, Bob Sanford, and Bonnie Moffre (Wildlife Services Team, Delmar).
Projection and map units: NYTM in meters, NAD83 horizontal datum.

Attribute Tables: Items (or Fields) in the UNITS Region Subclass Attribute Table
Contact: Habitat Inventory Unit, Division Fish, Wildlife and Marine Resources
Documentation Date:
Usage Notes:
  1. Wildlife Management Units are not changed every year. The Habitat Inventory Unit maintains the current version of the Wildlife Management Units.
  2. This coverage replaces the previously separate Deer Management Unit and Wildlife Management Unit coverages that were used through the 1997-1998 season.
  3. The region subclass UNITS should be used to display the WMU boundaries, due to the presence of additional non-WMU boundaries that define hunting season areas for Black Bear. These additional boundaries will appear when displaying polygons or arcs.
  4. The DeLorme atlases with highlighted features used as references for the creation of the new WMU boundaries have been filed by Kelly Stang (Wildlife Services Team) in the upstairs map cabinet at the Delmar Wildlife Resources Center.
  5. PAT items that contain codes for shading species maps use the following scheme: Codes were created by selecting a group of polygons having the same season dates, and assigning a code of 0 (for "closed" areas, if any) or 1. Codes for successive groups of polygons were incremented by a value of 1. With the exception of "closed" areas, codes were generally assigned from north to south and from west to east. These integer codes are related to shadesymbol numbers (defined in the AML's that draw the maps) by INFO lookup tables to specify the colors and patterns used to shade season/regulation areas on the maps. The shadesymbol numbers are in turn related by keyfiles to text specifying season dates or other regulations (used to draw the map legends).
  6. The management unit boundary lines are generally based on 1:100,000 scale digital line graph data.

Attribute Tables

Items (or Fields) in the UNITS Region Subclass Attribute Table

UNIT: The number of the Wildlife Management Unit.
UNITSQMILES
(Alias = Square miles):		 The area of the Unit in square miles (area of water bodies NOT subtracted).

Back to Attribute Table