Linking Habitat Quality to Population Dynamics for Conservation Decision Making

Endangered Species Recovery planning is often based on predictions from population models. Species recovery is contingent on habitat restoration, including reduction of threats such as predators and parasites. However, population predictions are rarely linked to habitat management, meaning that management cannot be easily guided by most formal decision-making frameworks. Predicted recovery trajectories may depend not only on the type and extent of restoration but also the timing. For example, populations may initially continue to decline as habitat restoration takes place, and their genetic diversity might need to be maintained during that process. There is also often considerable uncertainty about the effectiveness of proposed management in improving habitat quality and the effects of those improvements on population growth rates of the species targeted for recovery. We seek examples of approaches integrating habitat restoration and population dynamics to guide decision making. One example is where population data (e.g., occupancy) and habitat dynamics (e.g., transition probabilities between states) are directly integrated into a statistical likelihood. Another uses a metamodel to combine different interdisciplinary models (e.g., population, habitat, disease, predator-prey) to represent a more complex system integrating the flow of information and sequences of events among models. Decision frameworks to enhance species recovery could include management of relatively natural areas but also more intensively managed areas such as zoos or fragmented landscape with minimal long-term conservation potential for some species. Decision frameworks will ideally include adaptive management (i.e., re-current decisions), recognizing that conservation decisions often need to begin imminently, and that delaying action is a decision. We invite articles that include several of the following elements in the context of conservation decision making:

• Explaining why it is important to consider animal or plant population and habitat dynamics together.

• Case studies, models, or other demonstrations of how habitat and population dynamics should or can be linked. Examples may include remnant populations, but also recent or prospective translocations.

• Explicit or decision-making approaches (including adaptive management) for linking habitat and populations for conservation to guide conservation.

• Showing how loss of genetic variation in small populations can affect decisions given the time needed to restore habitat (reduced toxins, introduced predators, disease).

• Showing how variation in population and habitats over time and/or space are important for decisions about species recovery.