Identifying Preservation and Restoration Priority Areas for Desert Fishes in an Increasingly Invaded World

• Published in: Environmental management (New York) 2013-03, Vol.51 (3), p.631-641
• Main Authors: Pool, Thomas K., Strecker, Angela L., Olden, Julian D.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Agnatha. Pisces; Algorithms; Animal, plant and microbial ecology; Animals; Applied ecology; Aquatic ecosystems; Aquatic Pollution; Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution; Basins; Biodiversity; Biological and medical sciences; Catostomus clarkii; Catostomus insignis; Computer Simulation; Conservation; Conservation biology; Conservation of Natural Resources - methods; Conservation, protection and management of environment and wildlife; Creeks & streams; Desert Climate; Deserts; Earth and Environmental Science; Ecology; Endangered species; Environment; Environmental degradation: ecosystems survey and restoration; Environmental Management; Environmental protection; Fish; Fish conservation; Fishes; Forestry Management; Freshwater; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; General aspects; Gila; Gila intermedia; Habitats; Indigenous species; Introduced Species; Landowners; Management; Meda fulgida; Models, Theoretical; Monte Carlo Method; Native species; Nature Conservation; Nonnative species; Oncorhynchus gilae; Planning; Predation; Preservation; Priorities; Restoration; River basins; Salmon; Southwestern United States; Vertebrates: general zoology, morphology, phylogeny, systematics, cytogenetics, geographical distribution; Waste Water Technology; Water Management; Water Pollution Control; Water Supply; Watershed management; Watersheds; Wildlife conservation; Wildlife management; Xyrauchen texanus
• ISSN: 0364-152X; 1432-1009
• DOI: 10.1007/s00267-012-0013-5

A commonly overlooked aspect of conservation planning assessments is that wildlife managers are increasingly focused on habitats that contain non-native species. We examine this management challenge in the Gila River basin (150,730 km 2 ), and present a new planning strategy for fish conservation. By applying a hierarchical prioritization algorithm to >850,000 fish records in 27,181 sub-watersheds we first identified high priority areas (PAs) termed “preservation PAs” with high native fish richness and low non-native richness; these represent traditional conservation targets. Second, we identified “restoration PAs” with high native fish richness that also contained high numbers of non-native species; these represent less traditional conservation targets. The top 10 % of preservation and restoration PAs contained common native species (e.g., Catostomus clarkii , desert sucker; Catostomus insignis , Sonora sucker) in addition to native species with limited distributions (i.e., Xyrauchen texanus , razorback sucker; Oncorhynchus gilae apache , Apache trout). The top preservation and restoration PAs overlapped by 42 %, indicating areas with high native fish richness range from minimally to highly invaded. Areas exclusively identified as restoration PAs also encompassed a greater percentage of native species ranges than would be expected by the random addition of an equivalent basin area. Restoration PAs identified an additional 19.0 and 26.6 % of the total ranges of two federally endangered species— Meda fulgida (spikedace) and Gila intermedia (Gila chub), respectively, compared to top preservation PAs alone—despite adding only 5.8 % of basin area. We contend that in addition to preservation PAs, restoration PAs are well suited for complementary management activities benefiting native fishes.