Project Description
Expert Judgment for Greater Sage Grouse Releases
Greater Sage-grouse is listed as endangered under the federal Species at Risk Act. The Calgary Zoo, in an effort to augment wild populations in Alberta and Saskatchewan, began a captive breeding program in 2014. By 2018, the Zoo and its partners were ready to release captive-bred Sage-grouse into the wild. Because releases of this species had never been attempted in Canada, there was widespread uncertainty about the effects of the available release strategies for Greater Sage-grouse on the captive-raised birds as well as on the wild population. To help reduce this uncertainty over time, the Calgary Zoo expressed a desire to use a structured and transparent approach for developing and evaluating release strategies in order to aid future learning about the effectiveness of release strategies.
Compass was hired to facilitate a technical working group process made up of provincial, federal, and academic biologists. Compass facilitated a three-day information sharing workshop, and subsequently helped the group articulate value-focused objectives for the releases and then identify specific measures to quantify those objectives. The group then developed and iteratively refined four main release strategies. Compass designed and developed an online and interactive elicitation tool to use in a formal expert judgment process that quantified the likelihood of key biological and ecological outcomes. The results of the process clearly articulated the expectations for the effects of the release strategies and was used to support the rationale for the choice of which strategies to employ.
Project Details
- ClientThe Calgary Zoo
