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.
Sources
- how is recovery defined by the U.S. Endangered Species Act? (pubs.usgs.gov)
- 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 (bioone.org)
- https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/62/7/646/243343 (academic.oup.com)