Lessons from the reintroduction of listed plant species in California
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Lessons from the reintroduction of listed plant species in California Josephine C. Lesage1
•
Daniel Press1,2 • Karen D. Holl1
Received: 17 March 2020 / Revised: 2 July 2020 / Accepted: 2 September 2020 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Reintroduction is an increasingly common practice to conserve and recover threatened and endangered plant species, so understanding how practitioners view their work and identifying persistent resource mismatches are key to the long-term viability of these listed species. We interviewed practitioners involved in reintroduction projects for 14 species in the state of California to understand (1) how they defined recovery; (2) their assessment of the likelihood of recovery; (3) what advice they would share with other practitioners to improve reintroduction efforts; and (4) what resources could make future projects more successful. Practitioners’ definitions of recovery aligned with ecological theory and emphasized the importance of self-sustaining populations and large populations, as well as the presence of multiple populations. However, most practitioners felt that recovery was unlikely or did not think the species they worked with should or would be de-listed without the guarantee of perpetual future interventions. Practitioners thought that studying basic biology and natural history, using experiments to determine the best techniques, and repeatedly planting populations were important to project success. However, practitioners also felt they were missing critical resources, including long-term funding for implementation and maintenance, successful and positive relationships between members of the practitioner-agency-scientistlandowner nexus, and assurances/safe harbor agreements for experimental populations. Overall, rare plant reintroductions are complicated by persistent mismatches in timing and goals, but some individuals have been able to successfully navigate these challenges. Longer duration funding mechanisms for monitoring and maintenance and better data handling, storage, and dissemination would benefit future projects. Keywords Endangered species Perceptions Recovery Natural history Monitoring Experimental introduction
Communicated by Daniel Sanchez Mata. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-02002045-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Josephine C. Lesage [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
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Biodiversity and Conservation
Background and introduction The Endangered Species Act (‘the Act’) is one of the strongest pieces of conservation legislation ever to be passed in the United States (Gray 2007; Rohlf 2014). Though the Act has generally been well-supported by the public (Bruskotter et al. 2018), it has been subject to significant scholarly and political criticism both for doing too little to protect species and for overstepping the l
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