Effectiveness of Recovery Plans



Ok, so we learned in our last post what it is a recovery plan is supposed to do, but how well do they actually work? Does designing a strategy to prevent a species from going extinct actually guarantee population viability?

The short answer, is no. While it does provide a framework for management, in no way does having a recovery plan in place guarantee long-term success.

In fact, a 2011 study in the Unites States found evidence that there may not even be a correlation between at-risk population growth and the presence of a recovery plan (Bottrill et al., 2011). While recorded population values are likely to increase for species that do have a recovery plan, a large portion of this is due to an increased emphasis being placed on finding and counting the species. That is to say, there are just as many as before, we're just trying harder to find them.

Graph showing the high rate of population increase due only to a higher emphasis on population monitoring (blue on right). Also of interest is the fact that the number of species with declining population is actually higher for species that have a recovery plan (black on right). While this data was from an American study, it is very likely a similar result would be found in Canada

Source: Modified from Bottrill et al.

When Bottrill et al.,(2011) ran a statistical analysis on the species they were assessing, they reached the surprising conclusion that there was no statistical between the number of species de-listed (meaning the population was considered “recovered”) for species with and without recovery plans.

Based on this, it may seem that recovery plans are useless, and have no place in conservation biology, but that's not even near the truth. The Environmental Species Act (ESA) can be considered the United States' equivalent to SARA (remember, that's the Species at Risk Act), and it has three components: listing, restricting destruction of a species and its habitat, and recovery planning. Of these three components, Foin et al,. (1998) defined recovery planning to be the most important component. They reason that the other two areas work to minimise further population decrease, while recovery plans actually place emphasis on raising the population.

So if recovery planning is so important, why doesn't it seem to be working? Well, there are a number of improvements that can be made to the recovery plan development process which could raise the rate of success. The reason these improvements aren't being made isn't because conservation biologists are lazy or don't actually care about conserving species. Instead, it just comes down to a lack of money, time, and the involvement of a wide range of stakeholders in the process (Foin et al., 1998). In a perfect world, scientists would have unlimited time and resources at their disposal to get a full understanding of the characteristics of a species, and why exactly it is at risk. However, that is simply not possible, and researchers instead have to make an educated guess as to what can be done, and this is not always the best approach, as evidenced by the low success of recovery plans.

However, there is a great deal of effort being put into improving the process, and there does seem to be positive results. A team of researchers have developed a new program which assesses the different risks a species faces, and looks at the impact each has on population growth. If the tool cannot be used due to insufficient population data of the species, then this provides a clear indicator that further analysis of the species is required. Another big perk of this program is that its output is not made up of complicated scientific jargon which can only be understood by a small group of people. Instead, it is presented in a clear manner, which is useful when the findings need to be presented to a variety of interest groups.

 

Output of the risk analysis software for the loggerhead turtle. Each individual box represents a specific threat, and these threats are classified into rows. The colour of the box indicates the severity of that specific threat.

Souce: Bolton et al.



While the threats analysis program was originally designed to be used on the loggerhead turtle (you can learn more about that story here), it applies to all threatened species, and can be very useful when designing recovery plans.

Overall, it is clear that there is still work that needs to be done when it comes to recovery planning. While looking at success rates of recovery plans across the border doesn’t exactly paint an optimistic picture, it can also be seen that big developments are being made in this field, and improvements are always being made.

-Asfa and Shane

References

Bolten, A., et al. (2011). Quantifying multiple threats to endangered species: an example from loggerhead sea turtles. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 9.5, 295-301

Bottrel, M., et al. (2011). Does recovery planning improve the status of a threatened species? Biological Conservation, 144.5, 1595-1601

Foin, T, et al. (1998). Improving recovery planning for threatened and endangered species. BioScience, 48.3, 177-84