Footprints or Blueprints? the Role of Genetics in Setting Recovery Goals

Conservation biologists charged with setting recovery goals often begin by assuming equilibrium historical states as benchmarks and later confront the challenges of non-equilibrium conditions posed by the human population growth, migration and climate change.  In this talk we examine how technical recovery teams in the Pacific Northwest used population genetic concepts, assumptions, and analyses to meet these challenges in developing recovery goals for salmon listed under the Endangered Species Act. Technical recovery teams took different approaches.  Approaches included using historical population structure to define conservation units, incorporating genetic concepts such genetic effective size (N_e) into modeling parameters for population viability analyses that were used to develop abundance goals, and using inferences about migration and population abundance to set goals for spatial structure and diversity.