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In 2015, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service initiated a review of the status of Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis) in the contiguous United States. Available research and monitoring, while substantial, lacked information on the demographic rates, abundance, and trends necessary to complete a full viability assessment. Therefore, alternative sources of information were needed to inform the species status assessment. We designed and conducted an expert elicitation to capture the knowledge, professional judgments, and opinions of lynx experts to assess the status of, and the drivers influencing, these lynx populations. We elicited the likelihood and level of uncertainty regarding future persistence over several time frames (at years 2025, 2050, and 2100). The elicitation revealed experts' concerns that expected climate‐driven losses in habitat quality, quantity, and related factors will likely result in declines. Experts expect resident populations of lynx will persist in all five currently occupied geographic units in 2025; in 4 or 5 of the units at 2050; and in 2 or 3 units at 2100. Experts expressed a high level of uncertainty regarding the rate and extent of decline due to projected climate warming and corresponding effects to these lynx populations. In the absence of adequate monitoring data, this type of expert elicitation is a useful method to aid classification decisions, such as providing the scientific information the Service relied upon to complete the November 5, 2017 5‐year review which recommended that the lynx distinct population segment be removed from the list of threatened and endangered species.

Strategic conservation of imperilled species faces several major challenges including uncertainty in species response to management actions, budgetary constraints that limit options, and the need to scale expected conservation benefits from local to landscape levels and from single to multiple species. A structured decision-making process was applied to address these challenges and identify a cost-effective conservation strategy for the Federally listed endangered and threatened aquatic species in the Upper Tennessee River Basin (UTRB). The UTRB, which encompasses a landscape of ~58 000 km2, primarily in western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and south-western Virginia, harbours one of the most globally diverse assemblages of freshwater fishes and mussels at temperate latitudes. To develop a strategy for conservation of 12 fish species and 24 mussel species over a 20-year period, a management strategy that would best recover these species was identified given costs and uncertainty in management effectiveness. The main insights came from a trade-off analysis that compared alternative allocations of effort among management actions. A strategy emphasizing population management, which included propagation and translocation, performed best across a wide range of objective weightings and was robust to uncertainty in management effectiveness. Species prioritization was based on the expected conservation benefit from the best performing strategy, degree of imperilment, and species-specific management costs. Sub-basin prioritization was based on expected conservation benefit from the best performing strategy and feasibility of habitat management and threat abatement. Although the strategy was developed for imperilled aquatic species in the UTRB, the structured process is applicable for developing cost-efficient strategies to conserve multiple species across a landscape under uncertain management effectiveness. The process can assist a manager with limited resources to understand which species to work on, where to conduct that work, and what work would be most beneficial for those species in those catchments.

We developed components of a decision structure that could be used in an adaptive management framework for responding to invasion of hemlock woolly adelgid Adeleges tsugae on the Cumberland Plateau of northern Tennessee. Hemlock woolly adelgid, an invasive forest pest, was first detected in this area in 2007. We used a structured decision-making process to identify and refine the management problem, objectives, and alternative management actions, and to assess consequences and tradeoffs among selected management alternatives. We identified four fundamental objectives: 1) conserve the aquatic and terrestrial riparian conservation targets, 2) protect and preserve hemlock, 3) develop and maintain adequate budget, and 4) address public concerns. We designed two prototype responses using an iterative process. By rapidly prototyping a first solution, insights were gained and shortcomings were identified, and some of these shortcomings were incorporated and corrected in the second prototype. We found that objectives were best met when management focused on early treatment of lightly to moderately infested but relatively healthy hemlock stands with biological control agent predator beetles and insect-killing fungi. Also, depending on the cost constraint, early treatment should be coupled with silvicultural management of moderately to severely infested and declining hemlock stands to accelerate conversion to nonhemlock mature forest cover. The two most valuable contributions of the structured decision-making process were 1) clarification and expansion of our objectives, and 2) application of tools to assess tradeoffs and predict consequences of alternative actions. Predicting consequences allowed us to evaluate the influence of uncertainty on the decision. For example, we found that the expected number of mature forest stands over 30 y would be increased by 4% by resolving the uncertainty regarding predator beetle effectiveness. The adaptive management framework requires further development including identifying and evaluating uncertainty, formalizing other competing predictive models, designing a monitoring program to update the predictive models, developing a process for re-evaluating the predictive models and incorporating new management technologies, and generating support for planning and implementation.

We discuss several challenges encountered in peer review of Endangered Species Act listings and recovery plans, with particular attention to Meffe et al.'s (1998) statement on independent scientific review in natural resource management. First, Endangered Species Act listing documents and recovery plans pose a diverse array of scientific questions, and we suggest that overall effectiveness of peer review may be increased by segregating the critical issues and identifying specific reviewers for each issue. Some scientific reviewers may be unfamiliar with the decision standards prescribed by the Endangered Species Act and implementing policies. Unnecessary confusion could be prevented by providing reviewers with information about these standards and by requesting that reviewers clearly differentiate their assessment of decisions that must be based on available information from recommendations for future research. Short review periods constitute another constraint on careful review, but tight deadlines are fairly intractable in the context of the Endangered Species Act. We suggest that short time frames could be partially ameliorated by narrowing the scope of issues to be treated by each reviewer, and we discuss the issue of providing monetary compensation for efficient review. Finally, Endangered Species Act listing decisions and recovery planning may profit from more frequent peer review of intermediate analyses that precede publication of formal proposals or complete plans. Resumen: Discutimos varios retos encontrados en revisions colegiadas de los planes de listado y recuperacion del Acta de Especies en Peligro, con particular atencion a los comentarios de Meffe et al. (1998) sobre las revision cientifica independiente en el manejo de recursos naturales. Primero, los documentos de listado y planes de recuperacion del Acta de Especies en Peligro presentan una diversa gama de preguntas cientificas y sugerimos que la efectividad total de las revisiones colegiadas puede ser incrementada mediante la segregacion de los temas criticos e identificando revisores especificos para cada tema. Algunos revisores cientificos pueden no estar familiarizados con las normas de decision prescritas por el Acta de Especies Amenazadas y las politicas de implementacion. Se pueden prevenir confusiones innecesarias al proveer a los revisores con informacion sobre estas normas y mediante la solicitud de que los revisores diferencien claramente la valoracion de sus decisions, las mismas que deben estar basadas en informacion disponible en recomendaciones para la investigacion a futuro. Los periodos de revision cortos constituyen otra limitante para una revision cuidadosa, pero los plazos firmes son generalmente intratatables en el contexto del Acta de Especies en Peligro. Sugerimos que los tiempos cortos pueden ser mejorados parcialmente al reducir el espectro de temas a ser tratados por cada revisor y discutimos el tema de proveer una compensacion monetaria a los revisores eficientes. Finalmente, las decisions de los listados y planes de recuperacion del Acta de Especies en Peligro pueden verse beneficiadas por revisiones colegiadas mas frecuentes de analisis intermedios que precedan a la publicacion de propuestas formales o planes completos.

As agency biologists with more than 30 years of collective recovery experience, we provide our perspective on the endangered species recovery planning process and the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) recovery planning study. As part of the continuum from listing through recovery planning and implementation to species recovery and delisting, we believe that clearly written, well-designed recovery plans can play a key role in organizing and focusing the recovery effort for endangered and threatened species. We outline major opportunities, constraints, and limitations of the recovery planning process. Next we discuss some of the major results and recommendations of the SCB recovery plan study and identify 10 action items for further U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service consideration as possible ways to strengthen our recovery program for endangered and threatened species.