Using structured decision making and category count models to develop optimal policies for imperiled salamander habitat restoration

Frosted flatwoods salamanders, Ambystoma cingulatum, are federally-listed pond-breeding salamanders that inhabit wetlands embedded in pine-wiregrass ecosystems. They have likely declined due to widespread destruction of longleaf pine ecosystems and habitat degradation due to fire suppression. To explicitly address the uncertainty regarding necessary management actions for flatwoods salamander recovery, we held a structured decision making (SDM) workshop to develop an adaptive management framework for habitat restoration at one of the last strongholds for A. cingulatum-- St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge. We identified the need for state-dependent decisions, and defined possible states as combinations of habitat suitability (unsuitable (U) or suitable (S)) and occupancy (occupied (O) or unoccupied (U)), resulting in 4 combinations (S/O, S/U, U/O, U/U). We defined potential management actions for each state, and used expert elicitation to generate transition probabilities between states under two management portfolios: (A) a “future status quo” of frequent growing season burns, and (B) additional actions such as head-starting and fine-scale restoration. We then used a stochastic dynamic programming approach known as a category count model to develop a preliminary optimal management policy.