Monitoring a New England Cottontail Reintroduction with Noninvasive Genetic Sampling

Bauer, Melissa L.; Ferry, Brett; Holman, H. L.; Kovach, Adrienne I.

doi:10.1002/wsb.1069

Cited by 7 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…In two recent releases, dispersal into the surrounding landscape has occurred at the time of the writing of this paper, potentially indicating a more robust landscape-level response (Bauer & Kovach, unpublished data). These findings underscore the challenges of bringing back an extirpated population in a landscape devoid of neighboring occupied patches; such connectivity is critical in a metapopulation context to provide dispersers and gene flow to offset winter mortality and bolster genetic diversity (Bauer et al, 2020 ). The small numbers of individuals released and the small habitat patches available for reintroduction provide further challenges for these efforts.…”

Section: Remaining Uncertainties and Threatsmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Captive individuals produced an average of 2.3 kits per female weaned (2017–2019) with a 45% survival rate to weaning (2015–2019; New England cottontail Regional Initiative performance report 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019). In a reintroduced population, successful females produced a mean of 2.2 recruited offspring per year (2013–2017), with a maximum of 4; however, not all adult females survived to produce offspring in a given year (Bauer et al, 2020 ). If these rates are similar in wild populations, this low level of recruitment suggests that, on average, patches have very low or negative population growth and are reliant on immigration for persistence (i.e., population sinks), consistent with declining populations.…”

Section: Science Gains Since the Pece Decisionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Across all years of the regional monitoring effort (2016-2017 through 2020-2021 surveys), New England cottontail occupied 224 of 663 sites sampled and occurred exclusively (without eastern cottontail) on only 75 of those 224 sites (Table 1 ). When considered in context of the resiliency, representation, and redundancy tenets of species status assessments (USFWS, 2016 ), the New England cottontail does not appear to be resilient to current habitat and landscape conditions, extreme winter weather (Bauer et al, 2020 ; Cheeseman et al, 2021 ) nor to sympatry with eastern cottontail, as evidenced by the increasing proportion of co-occurrence with time (Table 1 ). Representation is low given the species’ narrow, specialized niche and concerns for low genetic diversity.…”

Section: Remaining Uncertainties and Threatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Reproduction in the wild (of both founders and their wild-born offspring) has been observed in at least three reintroduction sites, however, post-release and annual survival is highly variable, as is reproductive contribution among founding individuals. Achieving a self-sustaining population requires persistent effort, and without annual augmentation via new releases, some monitored populations declined to low numbers after an initial period of growth, with biased sex ratio and a loss of genetic diversity (Bauer et al 2020 , Bauer and Kovach unpublished data). In two recent releases, dispersal into the surrounding landscape has occurred at the time of the writing of this paper, potentially indicating a more robust landscape-level response (Bauer & Kovach, unpublished data).…”

Section: Remaining Uncertainties and Threatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, stochastic factors – demographic, genetic and environmental––are at play in the remnant, small populations. Random demographic fluctuations result in skewed sex ratios (Bauer et al, 2020 ), and winter storms, especially late spring snows, lead to stochastic mortality events (Bauer et al, 2020 ; Cheeseman et al, 2021 ). Genetic bottlenecks have reduced genetic diversity and continued ongoing genetic drift in isolated populations may result in loss of important adaptive alleles (Cheeseman et al, 2019b ; Fenderson et al, 2011 ; Fenderson et al, 2014 ).…”

Section: Remaining Uncertainties and Threatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Separating Proactive Conservation from Species Listing Decisions

Kovach

Cheeseman

Cohen

et al. 2022

Environmental Management

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Proactive Conservation is a paradigm of natural resource management in the United States that encourages voluntary, collaborative efforts to restore species before they need to be protected through government regulations. This paradigm is widely used to conserve at-risk species today, and when used in conjunction with the Policy for Evaluation of Conservation Efforts (PECE), it allows for successful conservation actions to preclude listing of species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Despite the popularity of this paradigm, and recent flagship examples of its use (e.g., greater sage grouse, Centrocercus urophasianus), critical assessments of the outcomes of Proactive Conservation are lacking from the standpoint of species status and recovery metrics. Here, we provide such an evaluation, using the New England cottontail (Sylvilagus transitionalis), heralded as a success of Proactive Conservation efforts in the northeastern United States, as a case study. We review the history and current status of the species, based on the state of the science, in the context of the Conservation Initiative, and the 2015 PECE decision not to the list the species under the ESA. In addition to the impacts of the PECE decision on the New England cottontail conservation specifically, our review also evaluates the benefits and limits of the Proactive Conservation paradigm more broadly, and we make recommendations for its role in relation to ESA implementation for the future of at-risk species management. We find that the status and assurances for recovery under the PECE policy, presented at the time of the New England cottontail listing decision, were overly optimistic, and the status of the species has worsened in subsequent years. We suggest that use of PECE to avoid listing may occur because of the perception of the ESA as a punitive law and a misconception that it is a failure, although very few listed species have gone extinct. Redefining recovery to decouple it from delisting and instead link it to probability of persistence under recommended conservation measures would remove some of the stigma of listing, and it would strengthen the role of Species Status Assessments in endangered species conservation.

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Section: Remaining Uncertainties and Threatsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Science Gains Since the Pece Decisionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Remaining Uncertainties and Threatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Remaining Uncertainties and Threatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Remaining Uncertainties and Threatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Separating Proactive Conservation from Species Listing Decisions

Kovach

Cheeseman

Cohen

et al. 2022

Environmental Management

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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Can at‐risk species serve as effective conservation surrogates? Case study in northeasternUSshrublands

2022

Self Cite

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Targeted, single-species management and ecosystem-based management are generally considered disparate conservation approaches. In imperiled ecosystems, these approaches may be complementary, when habitat management for targeted at-risk species provides broad ecosystem benefits through an umbrella or surrogate species effect. In the northeastern United States, extensive management has been ongoing since 2011 to restore declining habitat for an at-risk shrubland habitat specialist, the New England cottontail (Sylvilagus transitionalis), with the goal that other shrubland-obligate wildlife will also benefit; yet, the efficacy of these efforts has not been evaluated. In this study, we assessed whether habitat management targeting New England cottontail provides conservation benefits for shrubland-obligate birds. Specifically, we (1) identified shrubland-obligate birds that are indicative of the microhabitat conditions and habitat types suitable for New England cottontails, and(2) determined microhabitat and patch-level influences on shrubland bird occupancy at sites occupied by or managed for New England cottontail.

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Making decisions under demographic, management, and monitoring uncertainty with value of information

Liberati,

Rittenhouse,

Vokoun

2024

J Wildl Manag

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Learning and resolving uncertainty should be important components of management decisions, but not every type of uncertainty is equally important to resolve. For rare, threatened, and endangered species, information may be limited and there is often great urgency to halt potential population declines. Therefore, the most important uncertainties are those that would lead to different decisions intended to improve outcomes for species of interest. The New England cottontail (Sylvilagus transitionalis) is an endemic species to the northeastern United States and is listed as a species of special concern, threatened, or endangered in all states in its current range. States within the historical New England cottontail range have made substantial investments in habitat management, captive breeding, and research, but considerable demographic, management, and monitoring uncertainties remain. Connecticut is the geographic core of the current range of the species and therefore has been the focus of many management efforts, including improving habitat, creating new habitat patches, removing eastern cottontails (Sylvilagus floridanus), and releasing captive‐bred New England cottontails. We used a value of information analysis to identify the optimal management decision given current uncertainty and to evaluate how sources of uncertainty might lead to changes in management decisions. Given the current understanding of the New England cottontail in Connecticut, we identified the optimal management decision as improving existing habitat patches without monitoring for the species and managers could expect a 3.4% increase in populations if decision‐making uncertainty could be fully resolved. Multiple sources of uncertainty influenced results, but variation in New England cottontail density and the response of the species to the removal of eastern cottontails were most likely to result in changes to management decisions. At lower New England cottontail densities, releasing captive‐bred individuals competed with improving habitat as the optimal management action. Accounting for the value of information benefits New England cottontail management by guiding research efforts toward information that is most beneficial for decision‐makers and providing insights into parameter thresholds that would lead to changes in management decisions.

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Monitoring a New England Cottontail Reintroduction with Noninvasive Genetic Sampling

Cited by 7 publications

References 63 publications

Separating Proactive Conservation from Species Listing Decisions

Separating Proactive Conservation from Species Listing Decisions

Can at‐risk species serve as effective conservation surrogates? Case study in northeasternUSshrublands

Making decisions under demographic, management, and monitoring uncertainty with value of information

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