2000 Annual Western Division AFS Meeting
Telluride Convention Center
Telluride, Colorado
July 16-20, 2000

Endangered Species Recovery:
Theory, Application, and the Law

Tuesday Afternoon - July 18 - Center Ballroom

Chris Keleher; Bonneville Chapter President and Yvette Converse; USFWS

The purpose of this session is to review current philosophy of "recovery" and generate discussion on this topic.  Information is presented to (1) review some of the fundamental considerations of species recovery, (2) examine the legal aspects of recovery under the ESA, and (3) present applied approaches to recovery for several fish species.

A review of the legal aspects of recovery, as pertaining to the Endangered Species Act, will start off the session.  Discipline specialists will follow, covering different scales of consideration when setting recovery goals.  These include (1) genetic level, (2) population level, and (3) landscape/ecosystem level considerations when defining recovery.  Questions that may be addressed are what are some potential threats at these different scales of consideration, how should these different scales of consideration be integrated when defining recovery, and are there situations where one of these scales would weigh more heavily in defining recovery than the others?  

In an attempt to bridge the gap between theory and application, the second part of the session will provide case examples of how recovery is being approached for various species, with different life histories, in different geographic regions of the West.  Examples of recovery application in management situations will include Pacific salmon, Colorado River fish, and Rio Grande silvery minnow.  Speakers will discuss how recovery is being approached for the species they are working with, and will touch on how the disciplines covered in the first part of the session are integrated when setting recovery goals.  The session will end with a discussion/question period in a panel format.