Structured Decision Making for the Selection of Surrogate Species: A Case Study in the Klamath River Watershed A Case Study...

The U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS; Service) released its Draft Guidance for Selecting Species for Design of Landscape-scale Conservation (hereafter Guidance; USFWS, 2012) in July 2012 to provide guidance for directing Strategic Habitat Conservation towards achieving and maintaining functional landscapes. Beginning in the summer of 2012, scientists and managers from three Klamath field offices in Arcata and Yreka, California and Klamath Falls, Oregon came together with those from the Klamath National Wildlife Refuge complex in Tulelake, California and the Pacific Southwest regional office in Sacramento, California to define conservation objectives for a functional landscape in the Klamath River watershed and to pilot a surrogate species selection process at a USFWS/USGS Structured Decision Making (SDM) workshop at the FWS National Conservation Training Center. Our workshop problem statement was: We are using the process of Strategic Habitat Conservation in conjunction with a surrogate species approach to develop innovative and strategic approaches to species and ecosystem conservation in the Klamath River watershed.