here is some additional reading dealing with the ESA --see attached.
On Tuesday, August 16, 2016 2:15 PM, Joel Geier <joel.geier@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi all,
Here's some late-summer reading courtesy of the Congressional Research
service (thanks also to Prof. Michael Campana at OSU for hosting this
download site):
http://aquadoc.typepad.com/files/crs_esa-and-sound_science.pdf
This report is a high-level look at the question of how science has been
used in a series of recent decisions regarding listing or non-listing of
candidate species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and in policy
decisions affecting ESA-listed species.
Several things in here will be of interest to anyone who follows ESA
issues in the Pacific Northwest, whether you're interested in lynx, gray
wolves, Steller sea lions, salmon, or spotted owls. But there are some
interesting general ideas along with the specifics.
One particularly interesting tidbit relates to the idea of "DIVERSITY
INDICES" for comparing alternative plans. The example brought up in this
report concerns a National Forest management plan in Wisconsin(*). The
"diversity index" chosen gave high weight to Common Yellowthroats and
several other habitat "generalists" that are often found in cut-over
habitats.
We often see academic and popular-science accounts of studies that
measure "diversity" using a flat index, in which all bird species are
rated equally. A recent, widely-circulated example was an article
touting the idea that suburbs have fairly high bird diversity.
With a flat index, a site in the western Cascades that registers these
seven "generalist" species:
Great Horned Owl
Pacific-slope Flycatcher
American Robin
Bewick's Wren
Wilson's Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
White-crowned Sparrow
could score higher than a site with five relatively "specialized"
older-forest species:
Spotted Owl
Vaux's Swift
Hammond's Flycatcher
Pacific Wren
Hermit Warbler
One could imagine alternative ways to measure the biological value of a
site, by giving higher weight to relatively scarce/declining species.
Midwestern botanists have developed "floristic quality indices" based on
such ideas, but for some reason this idea doesn't seem to have much
currency in ornithology. Or am I mistaken?
Joel
(*) For any land-transfer movement advocates reading this, yes there are
indeed National Forests and other federal lands in Wisconsin, even
though it's east of the Mississippi!
--
Joel Geier
Camp Adair area north of Corvallis
POST: Send email to boo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
HELP: Contact boo-moderators@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Attachment:
Dylan ESA paper.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document
Attachment:
Dylan ESA press release.docx
Description: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document
