Research from a recently published study in Biological Conservation is the topic of an upcoming article in a magazine of The Wildlife Society, covering important news and trends in the wildlife profession.
The collaborative study by USGS and the USFS made news for a novel method to assess and rank the conservation status of less-well-studied species, the Rarity and Climate Sensitivity (RCS) Index. Using publicly available occurrence data for Pacific Northwest freshwater fishes, amphibians, and reptiles in conjunction with life history traits, researchers calculated an RCS for 114 species. Findings suggest that some of the most vulnerable species are not currently afforded protection as federally or state listed species. The RCS has wide applicability and may be an effective tool for assessing conservation status for multiple taxa, especially with increasing availability of public citizen science data from iNaturalist and other crowdsourced data repositories.
Mims, M.C., Olson, D.H., Pilliod, D.S., Dunham, J.B., 2019, Considering the Hidden Threats of Climate Change - A New Approach Puts Overlooked Species on the Conservation Radar: p. 50-52, https://www.fs.usda.gov/pnw/publications/considering-hidden-threats-climate-change-new-approach-puts-overlooked-species
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