Because "conservation" is synonymous with "recovery" for listed species, its use here must be understood as areas outside the range at time of listing needed for recovery, not mere survival of the species.

Because "conservation" is synonymous with "recovery" for listed species, its use here must be understood as areas needed for recovery, not mere survival of the species.

This is really a key phrase that may be under-appreciated by many. "Significant" could mean quantitatively significant, which is how I typically see the question addressed, e.g., "Loss of a species through 1/4 of its range is significant." But it could mean something like an ecologically significant portion of its range, such as the presence of a species in an ecosystem. Congress could have meant both (and other) interpretations...I think it is likely, in part because part of the purpose of the Act is to protect the ecosystems of T&E species.

Does this mean that all agency guidance that touches on section 4 components, from listing to CH to 5-year review, must go through public comment? Is there a de minimus standard for the size/scope of guidance?

See also the implementing regulations in 50 CFR 424.

Generally referred to as the "five factors" or the "five threat factors."

See also the section 7 regulations in 50 CFR 402.

As is spread throughout the Act, best available scientific and commercial data are a cornerstone of decision-making.

This was originally 66% (or 2/3), but was increased with the 1982 amendments. See the bottom this page for the reference.

One of how many species that might remain listed in perpetuity. I wonder how FWS will be handing delisting criteria of this and similar species...

What is this? How is this CMOA authorized? I don't understand...

This is a good table...wish all 5y reviews had such a nice, concise summary.

Oh dear! Recovery units in the review...but they are not identified as such in the recovery plan. Excepting the SMCRA consultation that absolves most potential for regulation, these recovery units could probably have a significant effect on JAM analysis.

And should probably be resolved by a taxonomic authority, not FWS/NMFS.

italic

Would be great to have one or more photos for comparison.

And this is for just one site...hundreds of eagles per site with who knows how many sites...that's huge.

What is LAP?

Also of note, I think the fatality rates in the charts above would likely exceed the 1% threshold...BAEA continental pop size is ~15,000 IIRC, so almost certain that the sum of fatalities for BAEA is >150.

This is a really useful conclusion. I haven't thought long enough about it, but want to make sure there is nothing tautological in the conclusion...

This is a great section

There's a bunch of weirdness going on here...once fig numbers, legends, and prose all aligned I think it will make more sense.

It's unclear what this plot is showing. What are all of the variables at play? This could be a place where telling the reader what they should see in the figure legend is really helpful.

So circle size is proportional to survey effort?

URL

If possible, should probably keep axis label alignment consistent among all the plots, probably center-aligned.

I think that this section will need more introduction using non-technical terms. Why is understanding the effect of prior information important? What aspects of the priors are we interested in? In non-tech terms, how were the simulations run; were there other options? Some of this is covered in the Methods, but could be touched on here because the Methods are so far off.

Under- or Over-prediction

Figure 5? (See also note that Fig 4 is skipped).

Missing Figure 4.

This is a great figure! The leading paragraph has a lot of what might go better in the caption, e.g., "Generally, combining the consistent prior (purple) with observed eagle data (green) results in a more conservative estimate of expected eagle exposure (yellow) than the raw data would suggest. In a few cases..."

This is an example of where keeping the code in-line, but folded by default, could be really useful...

Would avoid "primary" with a plural...primary indicates one at the top.

There's a typo in the equation and the sentence is missing something...

Is this the mean of the prior collision rate dist? If so, might put the val in the preceding paragraph for clarity (esp. important for the non-science folks).

The cube makes sense, but where does the height come from? I see the 0.2km below, but does that represent turbine height? Turbine height + buffer? If turbine height, then doesn't that vary by farm, effectively changing the volume surveyed and shifting the prior?

survey

Unless it interferes with MathJax, might use css of text-align:center for this equation.

We (ESC/CCI) should discuss how to attribute these...had names previously, but started to use just "DEfenders of Wildlife" after a bit for some reason. One option is to use author(s) names if we're archiving the projects and getting a DOI, otherwise use DoW. Or maybe we use author and DOI regardless! Open to suggestions.

analysis or working paper...I don't know where the line is between these two options...

This is the old navbar layout (split icons and text across different sides)...the section 7 "take" analysis repo has the newer layout, https://github.com/jacob-ogre/section7_take/blob/master/vignettes/_site.yml

Another great figure.

Wait...we're talking several hundreds or more eagles estimated to be taken per year at just these sites? That's huge! And I wonder what wind developers think of regulation that puts the estimated take that may be 5x higher than no-prior estimates?

This link is pointing to Leah Gerber's PNAS paper...change also below...

I suspect that a lot of people who do policy will not see how this is a demonstration...might need to ponder efficient ways to prove additional info. Think we probably want to take the "tell the reader the conclusion rather than describing the plot" approach.

For example, "A possible Bayesian eagle fatality model output (distribution of probabilities in gray) may indicate an average of five eagles will be killed (orange line). To err on the side of conservation, the Fish and Wildlife Service uses the 80th percentile of this posterior distribution (green line) in making permitting decisions. Note that this distribution is for illustration purposes, and does not apply to any real site."

which

Here

Is there utility in highlighting key words/phrases such as risk areas?

Might move this sentence to the end of the first paragraph. Also consider reversing the clauses (i.e., "Because estimates...").

Can split this sentence up to make it more readable.

This is a rather different picture of the species' status since the last 5-year review. And it's generally better!

This seemed to drive a lot of the last 5-year review...

If by "often" you mean that <2% of all consultations run longer than the 135-day limit. And only 110 consultations in TAILS have a duration longer than two years, so ~0.1% of consultations take "years" (and we know some of these are reinitiations from old dates, i.e., not actual multi-year consultations).

Of course, consultation may include nothing more than "technical assistance," which may be a precursor to formal or informal consultation, or may preclude any further consultation.

That is simply not true. Species making up the majority of salamander taxa (Plethodontidae) do not breed in water. Frogs ranging from the barking frog in the American Southwest to mouth brooding frogs to all or most glass frogs (Centrolenidae) do not breed in water.

Different start date recorded in TAILS

Scholar? Not even CEI's website identifies him as a scholar...

Interesting way to put it...I might have written, "although President Trump wants to cut the agency's $8.2 billion spending by about a quarter to kick environmental advocates in the teeth." The excuse of 'to help increase defense spending' is just a 2-for-1 ploy that works exceptionally well with the President's base.

But not Indiana Jones...an artifact of PDF text extraction.

college

That's a lot of authorized take! ITP should be over now, how many tortoises were taken? How many authorized since 1996 in Virgin River RU? What is the status of Virgin River RU tortoise pop?

Wow. 19 years and the agencies can't finalize their monitoring protocol. Impressive.

Would that it was ever undertaken...alas, it was not.

I guess they have to mention these "incidents," but it's pretty important to note that, at least for P. bernardina, the Forest Guardians petition was not the motivator. Instead, the species was an emergency listing because of Snail Spring drying up.

Toed the line, not towed...but I'm being pedantic.

This is simply not true. I lost and reported lost a monthly ticket; called VRE; and, at their request, emailed proof of purchase with a request to replace. Everything described here. And VRE did not follow up in any way, shape, or form. This misinformation should be removed from the website.

For any species.

As with Figure 1a...

This could either be added to the plan as a dynamic map (see Distribution) or pasted as a static image below.

This is just a test page note for the 5-factor relative importance page.

Example of dynamic version, not official!

This will never show up.

Dang, I just realized I forgot to add the Lit. Cit. section. Will do before putting the document up and making it public. Will also see if there's a clean way to link to the papers themselves.

I wanted an extra notice right near the top because CH is contentious...but this could go elsewhere, and certainly could be re-worded.

Interesting; I did not realize this was the case.

I'm not sure why the ECOS embed is not working here...it works when testing.

This is really low...

This could be updated when DPSs are defined.

This highlights one way that dynamic plans could be used: updating in light of the new DPSs.

If this is now established, then a sentence like this could be easily updated.

https://peerj.com/preprints/1860/

Lots of different ways to break this down to more manageable pieces.

The map shows specimen records, but could include a range layer or other accoutrements (e.g., filter records by date).

This kind of description is something that could be linked to an illustration, which might not fit well in a "traditional" recovery plan but is well-suited here.

This could be easily updated with the new DPSs.

This is a "page note." Presumably this would be the place to make general notes about the page in question. In the context of Federal Register notices, page notes could be used in addition to text-specific notes.

Can and should add a reference for McCullaugh and Nelder; can point to GBooks, Amazon, elsewhere.

Although it might be a bit of a pain to code, I think providing background shading in blocks of five offices would be very useful.

I think I should finish this sentence...

I think this might go into a modal anchored in the navbar.