SSA Report Writing Made Easy

Target Audience:

Teams who are transitioning for the SSA analytical phase to the report-writing phase, Species Assessment Team (SAT) project managers, Field office managers

Summary and Objectives:

This primary goal of this course is to help SSA teams transition from analyzing the species to writing the report. We expect this course to benefit both Species Assessment Teams (SAT) and Field Office (FO) team leaders as well as team members, and we anticipate the benefits to be immediate and long term. As teams learn how to transition from the analytical to the report-writing phase, team leaders will learn how to help team members capitalize on their strengths to complete the report efficiently and how to build Fish and Wildlife Service capacity for future Species Status Assessments (SSAs) and report-writing work. The course's collaborative writing material has implications both for and beyond SSAs, helping teams identify and set objectives for themselves as individuals and working groups as well as for species conservation broadly speaking. By introducing report-writing teams to the Prompt Book, the course also helps writers understand the objectives of the SSA report and briefly overviews some of the more important tools available to help teams accomplish these. Specifically, the course focuses on the most of these important of these objectives: creating a document with a clear logical chain that remains focused on species viability.

Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to:

• Identify when the team is ready to move from analysis to writing.
• Implement the collaborative writing process and adopt the team roles that are best suited to the project and the personnel.
• Establish the SSA team's report-writing objectives.
• Identify team-writing pitfalls and have a strategy for resolving them.
• Identify the SSA report's objectives and know how to access tools and resources to achieve them.
• Create a document with a clear logical chain that is focused on species viability.

Competencies Addressed: 

Oral Communication - Basic, Teamwork - Basic, Writing - Intermediate, Written Communication - Intermediate