Lessons from a century of conservation translocations

Translocation—moving individuals for release in new locations—is among the most important conservation interventions for increasing or re-establishing populations of threatened species. However, translocations often fail. To improve their effectiveness, we need to understand the features that distinguish successful from failed translocations.
Here, we assembled and analysed a global database of translocations of terrestrial vertebrates (n=514) to assess the effects of various design features and extrinsic factors on success. Unlike previous reviews, we analysed outcomes using standardized metrics i.e. a categorical success/failure classification, and population growth rate.
Probability of categorical success and population growth rate increased with the total number of individuals released but with diminishing returns above about 20-50 individuals. Releasing more animals may overcome stochastic variation in survival and reproduction, and could also indicate better overall resourcing..., This data was compiled from the literature and a questionnaire. How this data was collected and processed is detailed in the paper. The attached code will run all analyses detailed in the paper.
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