Trout Unlimited's Conservation Success Index

Trout Unlimited (TU) developed the Conservation Success Index (CSI) as a science-based tool to help guide conservation decisions of organizational staff, volunteers, and partners.  The CSI is a spatially-explicit, composite index based on four different groups of indicators used to describe the status of native salmonids: rangewide conditions, population integrity, habitat integrity, and future security.  The individual indicators are scored ranging from 1 to 5 and are summed for group level scores (range: 5 to 25) and group scores are summed for total scores (range: 20 to 100) to summarize conditions at more general levels.  Developed at the subwatershed (Hydrologic Unit Code 12) scale, the CSI is intended to be used as a coarse-scale assessment to inform discussions with project partners and be further supplemented with local knowledge and additional data.  It is delivered on TU’s website and can be accessed by various means to serve users with a wide variety of backgrounds and levels of technological expertise.  Originally developed for inland trouts, the CSI has been adapted and applied to salmon and non-native trouts.  Like other national and regional species and aquatic assessments, the CSI has both strengths and weaknesses that need to be recognized in order for it to be used appropriately and effectively.