The PVA also indicated that because the butterfly populations fluctuate widely from year to year, to prevent the populations from going extinct the minimum annual population growth rate must be kept much higher than at levels typically considered acceptable for other species. Following a recent outbreak of canine distemper virus, a PVA was performed for the critically endangered island fox (Urocyon littoralis) of Santa Catalina Island, California. The Santa Catalina island fox population is uniquely composed of two subpopulations that are separated by an isthmus, with the eastern subpopulation at greater risk of extinction than the western subpopulation. PVA was conducted with the goals of 1) evaluating the island fox’s extinction risk, 2) estimating the island fox’s sensitivity to catastrophic events, and 3) evaluating recent recovery efforts which include release of captive-bred foxes and transport of wild juvenile foxes from the west to the east side. Results of the PVA concluded that the island fox is still at significant risk of extinction, and is highly susceptible to catastrophes that occur more than once every 20 years. Furthermore, extinction risks and future population sizes on both sides of the island were significantly dependent on the number of foxes released and transported each year. PVAs in combination with sensitivity analysis can also be used to identify which vital rates has the relative greatest effect on population growth and other measures of population viability. For example, a study by Manlik et al. (2016) forecast the viability of two bottlenose dolphin populations in Western Australia and identified reproduction as having the greatest influence on the forecast of these populations. One of the two populations was forecast to be stable, whereas the other population was forecast to decline, if it isolated from other populations and low reproductive rates persist. The difference in viability between the two studies was primarily due to differences in reproduction and not survival. The study also showed that temporal variation in reproduction had a greater effect on population growth than temporal variation in survival. Controversy Debates exist and remain unresolved over the appropriate uses of PVA in conservation biology and PVA’s ability to accurately assess extinction risks. A large quantity of field data is desirable for PVA; some conservatively estimate that for a precise extinction probability assessment extending T years into the future, five-to-ten times T years of data are needed. Datasets of such magnitude are typically unavailable for rare species;