Case Study: University of California, Berkeley reduces extinction risk for Devil’s Hole pupfish with Palisade's @RISK

University of California Berkeley - Customer Case Study

The University of California Berkeley was confronting an imminent extinction risk for the Devils Hole pupfish, a species confined to a single wild pool that had dwindled to 35–68 fish in 2013. To determine how to establish a captive breeding population without accelerating extinction, Dr. Steven Beissinger used Palisade’s @RISK to model population dynamics and management trade-offs.

Using Palisade’s @RISK, Beissinger ran population viability analyses and Monte Carlo simulations (10,000 iterations, 100-year projections) to quantify median time to extinction (~26–27 years) and rising extinction probabilities (~45% by 25 years, 81–90% by 50 years). He also evaluated harvest strategies and life-stage elasticities, showing that removing eggs had the least impact (25 eggs ≈ one adult); this evidence guided U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service actions to collect eggs for captive breeding, and the combined efforts corresponded with the pupfish rebounding to just under 100 individuals.

University of California Berkeley

Steven Beissinger

Professor of Conservation Biology