Prioritizing uncertainties to improve management of a reintroduction program

The success of wildlife reintroduction efforts rests on the demographic performance of released animals. Whooping Cranes in the eastern migratory population—reintroduced beginning in 2001—demonstrate adequate survival but poor reproduction. Managers and scientists have used an iterative process of learning and management to respond to this management challenge, but by 2015, uncertainty about the causes of reproductive failure remained substantial. An expert judgment–driven process was used to develop and refine competing hypotheses for reproductive failure and to evaluate the impact of various management actions on components of reproduction (nesting success and fledging success) in light of the various hypotheses. I used that information to calculate value of information, the expected improvement in management performance associated with an increase in knowledge, which suggests research and monitoring priorities for the future.