Speed meets standards: powering the Wild Salmon Policy with rapid status assessments for Pacific salmon Conservation Units

Pacific salmon face increasing risks from climate change and habitat stressors, with widespread declines already evident. Tracking extinction risk across the 381 Canadian Pacific salmon Conservations Units (CUs) is urgently needed to respond adaptively to these changes. This review outlines how rapid status methods under Canada’s Wild Salmon Policy (WSP) can achieve this. These methods are used to assign Red, Amber, and Green statuses to CUs annually, reflecting a high to low extinction risk, and are built on the foundation of International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) methods. The WSP multi-metric method aligns with conservation ecology, is relatively easy to implement, applies broadly across CUs, and ensures comparability of statuses between CUs and years. It also fosters reproducibility, transparency, and objectivity. We highlight best practices in WSP rapid status assessments and describe the guidelines, processes, and tools designed to achieve them. Expert review, which includes local knowledge from Indigenous groups and others, is central to the process, ensuring assessments are robust and widely supported. These methods are intended to evolve through on-going implementation.