Team Leader, Salmon Fish Evaluation Group, NWFSC, NOAA-Fisheries
The field of ecosystem-based management is rich in general concepts, theories, and principles; but it is a relatively un-tested science in the messy and complex realities of application. I will illustrate the promise and perils of applying ecological and ecosystem principles to a conservation problem that literally surrounds us in the Puget Sound region. Protecting and restoring a region as large and diverse as the Puget Sound Basin is a daunting challenge for both scientific and political reasons. We as natural and social scientists are in the enviable position of having a large and diverse group of decision leaders from the region asking for our advice about how to ‘recover’ the Puget Sound ecosystem. The goals for this ecosystem-scale conservation effort include human health and socio-economic and cultural well-being, in addition to the more familiar aims of recovering species, habitats, water quality and quantity. I will highlight both bright spots in how scientific analyses are being used to illuminate strategies to achieve these goals and issues for which our lack of scientific understanding or communication of science is seriously limiting forward progress.
Mary Ruckelshaus is a Research Biologist with NOAA Fisheries at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, Seattle. Mary is a population biologist using ecological and evolutionary principles to design recovery strategies for imperiled species and ecosystems. Currently, her work develops ecological models, for example estimating the flow of ecosystem services under different management regimes within the Puget Sound basin. Mary has worked for more than 15 years on marine conservation issues in addition to her studies on salmon and ecosystem-scale planning. She is Chair of the Puget Sound Technical Recovery Team, a multi-stakeholder recovery team convened by NOAA Fisheries to develop biologically based delisting criteria for listed salmonids under the Endangered Species Act. She also chairs the Puget Sound Partnership’s Science Working Group in support of ecosystem-scale management for Puget Sound, serves as a trustee on The Nature Conservancy’s (TNC) Washington board, is a member of TNC’s National Science Council, and is an out-going chair of the Science Advisory Board of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS). Before joining the NOAA Fisheries in 1997, Mary was a faculty member in Biology at Florida State University for three years. She has a BS in human biology (Stanford University), a MS in fisheries (University of Washington) and PhD in botany (University of Washington).