Abstract
The continuing decline and loss of biodiversity has caused an increase in the use of interventionist conservation tools, such as translocation. However, many translocation attempts fail to establish viable populations, with poor release site selection often flagged as an inhibitor of success. We used species distribution models (SDMs) to predict the climate suitability of 102 release sites for amphibians, reptiles, and terrestrial insects and compared suitability predictions between successful and failed attempts. We then quantified the importance of climate suitability relative to 5 other variables frequently considered in the literature as important determinants of translocation success: number of release years, number of individuals released, life stage released, origin of the source population, and position of the release site relative to the species' range. Probability of translocation success increased as predicted climate suitability increased and this effect was the strongest among the variables we considered, accounting for 48.3% of the variation in translocation outcome. These findings should encourage greater consideration of climate suitability when selecting release sites for conservation translocations and we advocate the use of SDMs as an effective way to do this.
Highlights
Threatened species management is increasingly involving more interventionist forms of conservation action to secure viable metapopulations and reverse local extinctions (Hobbs et al 2011).Conservation translocation, defined as the intentional human-mediated movement of organisms from one location to another for conservation purposes (IUCN 2013), represents one such approach.In recent decades, there has been a global proliferation in the number of translocation-related studies (Seddon et al 2007; Taylor et al 2017)
There was a positive relationship between the species distribution models (SDMs)-based predicted climate suitability and the probability of conservation translocation success (Figure 1; Table 2)
Explicit consideration of release site climate suitability is rarely reported in the translocation literature, but our results indicate that it is important to the outcome of conservation translocations
Summary
There has been a global proliferation in the number of translocation-related studies (Seddon et al 2007; Taylor et al 2017). Many translocations fail to establish viable populations (Fischer & Lindenmayer 2000; Cochran-Biederman et al 2015). Attempts to improve translocation practice have identified a number of influential factors, such as the origin of the source population (Cayuela et al 2019), the length of supplementary feeding (White et al 2012), the life stage of individuals released (Muths et al 2014) and the overall habitat suitability of the release site (Cochran-Biederman et al 2015). Climate constitutes a fundamental component of overall habitat suitability but has received little attention in the literature, with very few translocation projects explicitly citing the use of techniques to estimate climate suitability (but see Brooker et al 2018)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
