Potential biological removal and other currently used management rules for marine mammal populations: A comparison

The management of marine mammal populations requires the balancing of conflicting interests and also compliance with national legislation and international agreements. These conflicts are intensifying and it is becoming urgent that management goals, and justifications, are clear and explicit. This paper summarises six methods currently used to assess the status of marine mammal populations: the IUCN Red List Criteria; the regulations under the European Union Habitats Directive; PBR; the IWC's Revised Management Procedure; HELCOM's approach to managing seals; and the Canadian Objective-Based Fisheries Management system for harp seals. It compares the assumptions and implications of the methods then describes how one of them, PBR, can be re-presented to make explicit the subjective choice at its centre, and push the decision about conservation targets back from scientists to policymakers, where it belongs.

Research highlights
► It is difficult to justify non-trivial conservation targets.
► Explicit and appropriate targets are required for each population and species.
► Common assessment methods can conceal their goals, and the choices underlying them.
► Scientists have no special expertise in choosing conservation targets.
► The PBR calculation is reworked to make the targets it contains explicit.