Pycnopodia Recovery Working Group

Adapted from the Pycnopodia Roadmap to Recovery.

The Pycnopodia Recovery Working Group is a community of practice initiated in 2019, with agency and non-governmental members from three countries, four US states, American Indian Tribes, and Indigenous First Nations. This group has grown with a thriving community of practice over seventy-five members strong with representation across 42 distinct organizations throughout the entire range of the sunflower sea star. Early work identified the need for the first sunflower sea star captive rearing program which launched in 2019 and continues today (Hodin et al. 2021), an IUCN global population assessment resulting in the red listing of Critically Endangered (Gravem et al. 2021), and dedicated research in sunflower sea star SSWD epidemiology (Gehman et al. in prep). In 2022, the Working Group developed and published a Roadmap to Recovery for the sunflower sea star, synthesizing key unknowns and next steps for recovering the species range wide.

The Pycnopodia Recovery Working group is an example of how a grassroots effort by science, tribal, agency, and non-profit communities can truly move the needle for the future of an entire species.

~ Nora Eddy, Associate Director, Oceans Program, The Nature Conservancy, CA

The Pycnopodia Recovery Working Group was instrumental in facilitating the aggregation of a novel range-wide dataset comprising nearly 50,000 scientific surveys to inform rangewide and regional assessments of SSWD-related declines (Gravem et al. 2021; Hamilton et al. 2021). The Working Group convenes three times a year to network, share lessons learned from throughout the species’ range, identify areas in need of attention, facilitate collaboration, and catalyze action. 

For more information read the Roadmap to Recovery for the Sunflower Sea Star.