ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the stages of conservation biology analysis that have been used to consider threatened and endangered species. Basically, there have been three general categories of consideration: case-by-case biology, population viability analysis (PVA), and multispecies habitat conservation planning. The chapter argues that have prematurely abandoned a single-species approach of population viability analysis, an approach that rapidly proving its worth. The National Forest Management Act of 1976, adopted three years after the Endangered Species Act contains better wording of the concept of species viability. In this document, each national forest supervisor is mandated to maintain "minimum viable populations of all vertebrate species." Prompted mainly by the United States Forest Service’s need for a better mode of analysis for the decision-making and management of the northern spotted owl, Michael Soule proposed an integrative approach to species viability analysis, which dubbed PVA.
