Collaboration between Atlantic and Pacific salmon biologists to enhance recovery of endangered salmon in North America

Autor: John F. Kocik, William R. Ardren, Craig Busack
Rok vydání: 2014
Předmět:
Zdroj: Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries. 24:685-688
ISSN: 1573-5184
0960-3166
DOI: 10.1007/s11160-014-9365-7
Popis: Salmon hold an iconic status along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of North America, historically providing critical ecosystem services and substantial economic benefits to these regions. Overharvest, fish passage barriers and habitat destruction, in combination with other factors, have resulted in extirpation of approximately 30 % of Pacific (Oncorhynchus spp.) and 90 % of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) populations in the contiguous United States (Parrish et al. 1998; Gustafson et al. 2007). Many of the remaining native populations of Atlantic salmon, and Pacific salmon are protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (Ford 2011). Significant population declines are also occurring on both coasts in southern Canada (Irvine et al. 2005), where conservation actions are ongoing. This conservation crisis has resulted in extensive research to inform management decisions associated with recovery of endangered salmon populations. Collectively, there is a large and productive research effort in North America focused on conservation of endangered salmon populations. Numerous partnerships are in place to facilitate collaborations among researchers within each of the respective Pacific and Atlantic salmon research communities. In contrast, opportunities for sharing information across these two communities are less structured and usually occur on a small scale—e.g., at international meetings. Publications from these international meetings have typically been collections of concept papers each focused on Atlantic salmon or Pacific salmon (e.g., Lynch et al. 2002; Waples and Hendry 2008). Our goal was to help establish new collaborations between these highly productive research communities by teaming up Atlantic and Pacific salmon biologists. We organized a ‘‘Teaming Up’’ symposium that was held at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Fisheries Society in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. This meeting helped connect scientists with similar interests and it was the catalyst for many new collaborative papers in this special issue. These new teams of Pacific and Atlantic salmon biologists identified areas where collaboration between these research communities W. R. Ardren (&) U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Western New England Complex, 11 Lincoln St., Essex Junction, VT 05452, USA e-mail: william_ardren@fws.gov
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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