The median number of populations required for delisting under U.S. Endangered Species Act recovery plans is 8.
Notes on verification
Directly confirmed by the peer-reviewed study's abstract (Neel et al. 2012, BioScience), corroborated by multiple independent republications/citations of the same study including USGS. All sources trace to the same original research, so this is confirmation of accurate representation rather than independent replication. [tier=unverified indep_score=0.3 clusters=2 claim_tier=notable] [rescored 2026-09-15: curated origin-host map (PR #65); unclassified hosts no longer scored as aggregators]
Sources
- how is recovery defined by the U.S. Endangered Species Act? (seed:environment_and_wildlife)
- https://bioone.org/journals/bioscience/volume-62/issue-7/bio.2012.62.7.7/By-the-Numbers--How-is-Recovery-Defined-by-the/10.1525/bio.2012.62.7.7.short (corroboration)
- https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/62/7/646/243343 (corroboration)