Populations in Peril: Rapid Effects of Captive, Conservation Breeding on the Performance of an Endangered Species, the Atlantic Salmon

In recent decades, rapid environmental change wrought by anthropogenic influences has resulted in steep population declines for species worldwide.  As populations decrease drastically, managers attempt to protect remaining individuals in efforts to conserve populations as a whole.  Captive and supplemental breeding programs are involved heavily in such conservation and restoration efforts, and will likely be used in years to come.  In fact, it is estimated that for vertebrates alone, at least 2000-3000 species will require captive breeding over the next 200 years.  Currently, such a case is evident in Canada’s eastern provinces.  The Inner Bay of Fundy’s (iBoF) Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) populations were listed as endangered in 2001, and currently undergo an intensive, pedigree-based, mean-kinship minimizing captive breeding and supplementation program.  Such programs face distinct challenges including, but not limited to, adaptation to captive conditions as a result of inadvertent artificial selection.  While there is evidence to suggest that domestication can lead to behavioral and performance variation among populations, it is unclear how quickly, or even if, such divergence may occur in conservation programs aimed at limiting it.  We are using up to 3 generations of pedigree information to conduct an intensive study investigating the effects of conservation breeding and captive rearing on the behavior, growth and survival of endangered Atlantic salmon in captivity and in the wild.  The mitigation techniques aimed at limiting domestication, in concert with the pedigree information, afford us the unique ability to create and identify (upon recapture) specific treatment groups (varying generations of exposure to domestication, mean kinship, and mitigation strategies) for performance-based studies.  By incorporating results from relative survival studies in the wild with lab-based behavioral and growth experiments, this study helps elucidate the effects of a captive, conservation breeding program on the early life-history of endangered Atlantic salmon populations in both captive and wild environments.  Such results can provide direct insight and guidance in the application of captive breeding programs to population and species restoration efforts.