Richard L. Church University of California, Santa Barbara

 An “endangered” species is one that is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range  A “threatened” species is one that is likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future  There exists a formal process to list a species as threatened or endangered  1351 domestic species on the T&E list (744 plants are plants)  811 species added in the last 20 years  Lawsuit has been filed to add 681 species at once (WildEarth Guardians) 2

Summary of Listed Species Listed Group United StatesForeign Total Listings (US and Foreign) US Listings with active Recovery Plans 3 Endang.Threat.TotalEndangeredThreatenedTotal Listings Mammals Birds Reptiles Amphibians Fishes Clams Snails Insects Arachnids Crustaceans Corals Animal Subtotal Flowering Plants Conifers and Cycads Ferns and Allies Lichens Plant Subtotal Grand Total as of 4/3/08 3

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 One of many organizations that attempts to protect species of concern  Purchases land and designs protection plans throughout the world  For the US, their data set involves 2700 species of concern (imperiled or threatened) 5

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Where should we target protection for threatened and imperiled species? 9

SSCP: species set covering problem Minimize the number of sites chosen (hexagons) in order to represent each G1 and G2 species at least once 10

The Species Set Covering Problem: using coverage set notation More than 2700 constraints Optimization model contains more than 4500 sites and 2700 species, thus approximately 4500 X variables and 2700 constraints 11

SSCP: results 12

 There are regions of hot spots, California, the Clinch River basin, Hawaii, Florida, Gulf region of Mississippi and Alabama  Impacts due to Climate Change are not understood  Considerable regional-wide efforts will need to be made in order to protect species at risk.  In the next part of the talk, I will present an example for one such species, The San Joaquin Kit Fox 13