Response to “Conservation-Reliant Species: Toward a Biology-Based Definition”

question the utility and legality of using the conservation-reliant spe-cies concept to delist species, arguing that it has been defined in ways that ignore what they erroneously assert is the Endangered Species Act’s (ESA) policy emphasis on self-sufficiency in the wild as “a key aspect of species recovery.”We appreciate that Rohlf and col-leagues want to return to a definition similar to the one we created in 2005. Writing in the context of the ESA, we noted that recovery was a continuum in which conservation-reliant species differed in the degree that they “can maintain a self-sustaining population in the wild only if ongoing manage-ment actions of proven effectiveness are implemented” (Scott et al. 2005, p. 386). Our understanding of con-servation reliance has evolved over the past decade as we have evaluated a greater range of species and have sought to make the concept relevant to management and policy, but it has continued to reflect the core insight: A species is “conservation reliant” when it requires the management of threats to maintain its population or distribu-tion at socially determined levels.Rohlf and colleagues’ central claim is that a species that has met its demo-graphic recovery goals cannot be delisted as