Facilitated Workshop Jeopardy Analyses under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act (2004)

CONCUR was retained by NOAA Fisheries to help design and facilitate a three-day Technical Workshop on jeopardy assessment in August 2004. The goal of the workshop was to solicit individual comments from scientific experts in the disciplines of conservation biology, population ecology, and risk assessment on the current analytical framework by which NOAA Fisheries evaluates jeopardy under section 7 of the ESA and options for assessing species’ risk under varying circumstances. Key topics for discussion included population ecology and habitat factors in the analysis, risk measures, quantitative and qualitative methods of decision analysis, and dealing with situations of uncertainty and poor data. The workshop was intended to inform NOAA Fisheries re-evaluation of its approach to jeopardy and to improve this process so it is more transparent, methodical, consistent, replicable, objective, and defensible. The workshop resulted in the development of a series of recommendations for improving NOAA jeopardy assessments.