Incorporating Environmental Data into a Structured Decision-Making Process: An Example from the San Francisco Bay-Delta

Declines, both recent and longstanding, of native fishes in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River system of California’s Central Valley have led to innovative approaches to fish protection and recovery.   The Service employs a structured decision-making process to protect state and federally listed fish species in the San Francisco Bay-Delta.  Management agencies and their stakeholders expect and require that policy decisions be informed by the application of the best available science.  The use of an interagency technical team that evaluates biological and technical data to develop recommendations for management has helped to make species protection both more collaborative and more transparent.  This presentation will briefly cover the conceptual models used by the interagency Smelt Working Group, provide an analysis of some of the environmental data used, and discuss some “lessons learned” that may be valuable to resource managers dealing with similar issues in other systems and thoughts on the interface of policy and science in management of listed species.