Digging the pupfish out of its hole: risk analyses to guide harvest of Devils Hole pupfish for captive breeding.

ABSTRACT: The Devils Hole pupfish is restricted to one wild population in a single aquifer-fed thermal pool in the Desert National Wildlife Refuge Complex. Since 1995 the pupfish has been in a nearly steady decline, where it was perched on the brink of extinction at 35-68 fish in 2013. A major strategy for conserving the pupfish has been the establishment of additional captive or "refuge" populations, but all ended in failure. In 2013 a new captive propagation facility designed specifically to breed pupfish was opened. I examine how a captive population can be initiated by removing fish from the wild without unduly accelerating extinction risk for the pupfish in Devils Hole. I construct a count-based PVA model, parameterized from estimates of the intrinsic rate of increase and its variance using cou

SUBMITTER: Beissinger SR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4168763 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature