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Graptemys Barbouri) Species Status Assessment Report for the Barbour’s Map Turtle (Graptemys barbouri) Adult female Barbour’s map turtle, Chipola River, FL. (credit: Jonathan Mays, FWC) May 2017 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Region 4 Atlanta, GA This document was prepared by Lisa Yarbrough (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – Panama City, FL Ecological Services Field Office) with assistance from Dr. Sean Blomquist (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – Panama City, FL Ecological Services Field Office) and Andreas Moshogianis (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – Region 4/Southeast Regional Office). Valuable peer reviews of a draft of this document were provided by John Jensen (Georgia Department of Natural Resources), Jonathan Mays (Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission), Jim Godwin (Alabama Natural Heritage Program), Lora Smith (Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center, Georgia), Sean Sterrett (University of Massachusetts), and Marshall Williams (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – Region 4/ Southeast Regional Office). We appreciate the time and effort of those dedicated to learning and implementing the SSA Framework, which resulted in a more robust assessment and final report. Suggested reference: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 2017. Species status assessment report for the Barbour’s Map Turtle (Graptemys barbouri). May, 2017. Atlanta, GA. Barbour’s Map Turtle SSA Page ii 2017 Species Status Assessment Report For Barbour’s Map Turtle (Graptemys barbouri) Prepared by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This species status assessment (SSA) reports the results of the comprehensive status review for the Barbour’s map turtle (Graptemys barbouri), documenting the species’ historical condition and providing estimates of current and future condition under a range of different scenarios. The Barbour’s map turtle is a riverine turtle native to the Apalachicola – Chattahoochee – Flint (ACF) basin, Chipola, Choctawhatchee, Pea, Ochlockonee, and Brother Rivers within Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. The species occurs in fast – moving sections of limestone-bottomed streams and rivers with abundant basking sites consisting of snags and fallen trees. They can also occupy sandy bottoms of alluvial rivers with low visibility, impoundments, and blackwater streams; however their densities are much lower in these habitats. The SSA process can be categorized into three sequential stages. During the first stage, we used the conservation biology principles of resilience, redundancy, and representations (together, the 3Rs) to evaluate individual Barbour’s map turtle life history needs (Table ES-1). The next stage involved an assessment of the historical and current condition of species’ demographics and habitat characteristics, including an explanation of how the species arrived at its current condition. The final stage of the SSA involved making predictions about the species’ response to positive and negative environmental and anthropogenic influences. This process used the best available information to characterize viability as the ability of a species to sustain populations in the wild over time. To evaluate the current and future viability of the Barbour’s map turtle, we assessed a range of conditions to allow us to consider the species’ resiliency, representation, and redundancy. For the purposes of this assessment, populations were delineated using the three river basins that Barbour’s map turtles have historically occupied (i.e. ACF, Choctawhatchee, and Ochlockonee River basins). Resiliency, assessed at the population level, describes the ability of a population to withstand stochastic disturbance events. A species needs multiple resilient populations distributed across its range to persist into the future and avoid extinction. A number of factors, including (but not limited to) water flow, instream substrate, basking sites, and sandbars, may influence whether Barbour’s map turtle populations will occupy available habitat. As we considered the future viability of the species, more populations with high resiliency distributed across the known range of the species can be associated with higher species viability. As a species, the Barbour’s map turtle has moderate resiliency, with the majority of the populations in moderate condition. Redundancy describes the ability of the species to withstand catastrophic disturbance events; for Barbour’s Map Turtle SSA Page iii 2017 the Barbour’s map turtle, we considered whether the distribution of resilient populations was sufficient for minimizing the potential loss of the species from such an event. The Barbour’s map turtle historical range was limited to the ACF basin in southeastern Alabama, southwestern Georgia, and Florida’s panhandle. Both the number and distribution of populations occupying that historical range has increased over the past 60 years. Representation characterizes a species’ adaptive potential by assessing geographic, genetic, ecological, and niche variability. The Barbour’s map turtle has exhibited historical variability in the physiographic regions it inhabited, as well as the size and range of the river systems it inhabited. At the species level, we estimated that the Barbour’s map turtle currently has moderate adaptive potential due to its abundance in six major rivers and one tributary. Together, the 3Rs comprise the key characteristics that contribute to a species’ ability to sustain populations in the wild over time (i.e. viability). Using the principles of resiliency, redundancy, and representation, we characterized both the species’ current viability and forecasted its future viability over a range of plausible future scenarios. To this end, we ranked the condition of each population by assessing the relative condition of occupied river reaches using the best available scientific information. To assess the future condition of the Barbour’s map turtle, a variety of stressors, including water flow, open sandbars, and in-water woody debris protection, and their (potential) effects on population resiliency were considered. Populations with low resiliency are considered to be more vulnerable to extirpation, which in turn, would decrease species’ level representation and redundancy. To help address uncertainty associated with the degree and extent of potential future stressors and their impacts on species’ requests, the 3Rs were assessed using three plausible future scenarios. These scenarios were based, in part, on river degradation from over withdrawal of water for human use and the result of climate models (International Panel on Climate Change 2014) that predict changes in habitat used by the Barbour’s map turtle. An important assumption of the predictive analysis was that future population resiliency is largely dependent on water quality, water flow, and instream and riparian habitat conditions. Our assessment predicted that six HUC8 Barbour’s map turtle populations would experience negative changes to these important habitat requisites if Scenario 2 occurs. Given Scenario 1, “Status Quo”, no loss of resiliency, representation, and redundancy is expected to occur. Under this scenario, we predicted that two HUC8 populations would remain in high condition, thirteen HUC8 populations would remain in moderate condition, and one HUC8 would remain in low condition. Given Scenario 2, “Historical”, we predict a reduction in redundancy throughout the species range with the removal of six HUC8 populations. The Pea, Choctawhatchee, Ocklockonee, and Wacissa populations would become extinct due to river habitat degradation due to excessive water withdrawal for human use. Within the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee, Flint River (ACF) Barbour’s Map Turtle SSA Page iv 2017 basin, two HUC8 populations would remain in high condition and eight HUC8 populations would remain in moderate condition. Existing levels of representation and resiliency is not expected to change due to Barbour’s map turtle wide distribution in the ACF. Given Scenario 3, “Climate Change”, we predict no loss of resiliency, representation, or redundancy. Under this scenario, stressors influenced by the predicted climate change models are minimized by existing federal, state, and non-government organization efforts to protect the HUC8s for their important natural resources, functions, and sustained key social, economic and cultural values. Two HUC8 Barbour’s map turtle populations would remain in high condition, thirteen HUC8 populations would remain in moderate condition, and one HUC8 would remain in low condition. Overall Summary The analysis of species’ current condition revealed the Barbour’s map turtle abundance and distribution have increased, with the species occupying five additional rivers. Overall, the Barbour’s map turtle faces a variety of threats from reduced water flow from dams, fluctuating levels of water quality and in-water woody debris from the use of riparian BMPS, dredging and deadhead logging, and collection for the pet trade and human consumption. These threats were important factors in our assessment of the current and future viability of the Barbour’s map turtle and are not expected to significantly change in the future. Climate change is the only threat with great uncertainty and could pose a significant threat if the changes in climatic conditions follow worse case scenarios. Our estimation of the species’ moderate to high resiliency, redundancy, and representation throughout the majority of its range suggest that it has the ability to sustain its populations into the future. Barbour’s Map Turtle SSA
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