Translocation digest: February 2014

News:

Financial problems associated with relocation of local human communities in Madhya Pradesh, India, threatens proposed Cheetah translocation.
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/india-cheetah-reintroduction-nauradehi-wildlife-sanctuary-madhya-pradesh/1/340619.html

Mammal Society urges beaver reintroduction as part of flood management in the UK uplands.
http://www.smallholder.co.uk/news/10983329.Bring_back_beavers_to_stop_flooding__urges_Mammal_Society/?ref=nt

Northumberland National Park, UK, to consider reintroduction of beaver and pine marten.
http://www.berwick-advertiser.co.uk/news/local-news/all-news/beavers-could-be-reintroduced-to-national-park-1-3293593

Third phase of elk reintroduction to go ahead in Virginia, US.
http://www.leesburgtoday.com/more_a/middleburg_life/believe-it-or-not-elk-in-virginia/article_4b47c656-903a-11e3-af6b-001a4bcf887a.html

IUCN Reintroduction Case Studies published
http://wildlifenews.co.uk/2014/global-re-intorductions-case-studies-published/

Arizona (US) Fish and Wildlife officials to change management of desert bighorn introduction after losing 13 of 31 translocated animals.
http://kjzz.org/content/20802/arizona-game-and-fish-make-adjustments-bighorn-sheep-reintroduction

Yurok Tribe hopes California condors can be reintroduced in Klamath River Basin

http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20140221/LIFE/402210306

US Columbia River Tribes and Canadian First Nation work with governmental agencies to plan fish pass construction and reintroduction of migratory fish.

http://www.celp.org/2014/02/21/fish-passage-and-reintroduction-into-the-us-canadian-upper-columbia-river/

Publications:

Cromsigt, J. P. G. M., te Beest, M. (2014), Restoration of a megaherbivore: landscape-level impacts of white rhinoceros in Kruger National Park, South Africa. Journal of Ecology, 102: 566–575. doi: 10.1111/1365-2745.12218

GRANGE, Z. L., VAN ANDEL, M., FRENCH, N. P. and GARTRELL, B. D. (2014), Network Analysis of Translocated Takahe Populations to Identify Disease Surveillance Targets. Conservation Biology, 28: 518–528. doi: 10.1111/cobi.12178

OLDS, A. D., CONNOLLY, R. M., PITT, K. A., MAXWELL, P. S., ASWANI, S. and ALBERT, S. (2014), Incorporating Surrogate Species and Seascape Connectivity to Improve Marine Conservation Outcomes. Conservation Biology. doi: 10.1111/cobi.12242

Mckelvey, K. S., Aubry, K. B., Anderson, N. J., Clevenger, A. P., Copeland, J. P., Heinemeyer, K. S., Inman, R. M., Squires, J. R., Waller, J. S., Pilgrim, K. L. and Schwartz, M. K. (2014), Recovery of wolverines in the Western United States: Recent extirpation and recolonization or range retraction and expansion?. The Journal of Wildlife Management, 78: 325–334. doi: 10.1002/jwmg.649

Seddon, P.J., Moehrenschlager A. & Ewen J. (2014). Reintroducing resurrected species: selecting DeExtinction candidates TREE 29 (3): 140–147.

Translocation digest: October 2013

Projects:

Reintroduced Gorillas Going StrongDigitalJournal.com

The Aspinall Foundation's reintroduction of western lowland gorillas to areas of Africa where they have been hunted to extinction appears to be working, ...

10 gazelles reintroduced from Azerbaijan to GeorgiaNews.Az

Reintroduction of gazelles from Azerbaijan to Georgia as part of the project of IDEA campaign “Reintroduction of gazelles on their historical habitat in the ...

See all stories on this topic » Wild horse reintroduction project updateUB Post Mongolia has been implementing the “Project on Re-Acclimatizing the Wild Horse” in Mongolia with the government of the Czech Republic and Prague Zoo ... See all stories on this topic » Researchers see comeback for Europe's rare animalsLas Vegas Sun ... to the study, which found that protecting habitats, restricting hunting, reducing pollution and the careful reintroduction were key to the species' survival. See all stories on this topic » Group questions need for wild bisonGreat Falls Tribune A few spoke in favor of bison reintroduction. “Why do we need wild bison?” said Jo Schipman, who argued there is no way to contain the animals. “It's never ... See all stories on this topic » Salmon reintroduced to Czech rivers after 50-year absence due to ...NBCNews.com (blog) Members of Czech Fishing Union and Bohemian Switzerland National Park release salmon every year to Kamenice River as part of thereintroduction program ... See all stories on this topic » Ferret release akin to herding catsSeattle Post Intelligencer The Arizona Game and Fish Department, with the cooperation of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, released 34 black-footed ferrets at a reintroduction site in ... See all stories on this topic » Banff prepares for return of bisonVancouver Sun The reintroduction - which draws on Parks Canada's long record of managing bison in national parks such as Elk Island, Wood Buffalo and Grasslands - won't ... See all stories on this topic »

Publications:

Bradley, D. W., Molles, L. E. and Waas, J. R. (2014), Post-translocation assortative pairing and social implications for the conservation of an endangered songbird. Animal Conservation, 17: 197–203. doi: 10.1111/acv.12083

Guisan A. et al (2013). Predicting species distributions for conservation decisions. Ecology Letters 16: 1424–1435. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.12189/abstract

Olson, Z. H., Whittaker, D. G. and Rhodes, O. E. (2013), Translocation history and genetic diversity in reintroduced bighorn sheep. The Journal of Wildlife Management, 77: 1553–1563. doi: 10.1002/jwmg.624

Translocation digest: August 2013

Projects:

Sea eagles breed on east coast of Scotland for first time in almost ...Telegraph.co.uk

Most have moved long distances from the release point, with some ending up in the west Highlands where birds have been reintroduced at different sites over a ...

See all stories on this topic »

PLANTS CONSIDERED FOR ASSISTED MIGRATION TO ...GardenNews.biz (press release)

Adam Smith, an ecologist at the Missouri Botanical Garden has begun to determine the ability of “chaperoned” assisted migration to aid plants in responding to ...

See all stories on this topic »

Ibis reintroduction program sees fledging successThe Japan Times

NIIGATA – Kei Osada, 41, is the man behind the recent success of a government effort toreintroduce the crested ibis as part of a captive breeding program for ...

See all stories on this topic »

Keeping the Seychelles Island Giant Tortoises Off the Endangered ...The Edwardsville Intelligencer

Initial results of Giant Tortoise reintroduction seem positive, but close monitoring and care will need to be a priority as this delicate balance takes place. Full text ...

See all stories on this topic »

New born beavers pictured at trial site aimed at bringing the animal ...Scottish Daily Record

The five youngsters or "kits" have been spotted at the Scottish beaver trial site at Knapdale in Argyll, the only licensed reintroduction scheme for beavers - and ...

See all stories on this topic »

Plan seeks 'chaperones' for threatened speciesNature.com

Critics claim that such 'assisted migration' could transform struggling species into destructive invaders, or inadvertently transmit disease, or that hybridization ...

See all stories on this topic »

A timeline of the desert tortoise's slow and steady declineHigh Country News

Fish and Wildlife and the San Diego Zoo experimentally translocated juvenile tortoises from the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center to the former Nevada Test ...

See all stories on this topic »

Publications:

Bristol, R. M., Tucker, R., Dawson, D. A., Horsburgh, G., Prys-Jones, R. P., Frantz, A. C., Krupa, A., Shah, N. J., Burke, T. and Groombridge, J. J. (2013), Comparison of historical bottleneck effects and genetic consequences of re-introduction in a critically endangered island passerine. Molecular Ecology, 22: 4644–4662. doi: 10.1111/mec.12429

CULLINGHAM, C. I. and MOEHRENSCHLAGER, A. (2013), Temporal Analysis of Genetic Structure to Assess Population Dynamics of Reintroduced Swift Foxes. Conservation Biology, 27: 1389–1398. doi: 10.1111/cobi.12122

Fisk, J. M., Kwak, T. J. and Heise, R. J. (2014), Modelling riverine habitat for robust redhorse: assessment for reintroduction of an imperilled species. Fisheries Management and Ecology, 21: 57–67. doi: 10.1111/fme.12050

Gomez, E. D., Cabaitan, P. C., Yap, H. T. and Dizon, R. M. (2014), Can Coral Cover be Restored in the Absence of Natural Recruitment and Reef Recovery?. Restoration Ecology, 22: 142–150. doi: 10.1111/rec.12041

Jones, T. A. (2013), When local isn't best. Evolutionary Applications, 6: 1109–1118. doi: 10.1111/eva.12090

More than life or death, part II: plant reintroduction monitoring

After writing about the problems associated with relying on basic demographic parameters for evaluating animal reintroduction projects, in this post I'll be looking more closely at how plant translocations can be more accurately monitored and evaluated by using a more nuanced set of indicators than just survival alone.  Although this post was prompted by a recent commentary by Ed Guerrant on the conclusions of three recent reviews of plant reintroductions (one being mine, another by Ed and a third by Sandrine Godefroid and co-authors, all citations below), I wanted to look again at an older publication by Bruce Pavlik from 1996. Ed's commentary quite rightly encourages people undertaking plant conservation translocations to use several measures as indicators of success, namely abundance, extent, persistence and resilience proposed by Pavlik in the Center for Plant Conservation volume Restoring Diversity. As with many messages from this book, I am disheartened that there has not been wider uptake of the recommendations especially considering that it is now 18 years since publication.

Pavlik's description of the four indicators of success are useful because he adds valuable extra detail to the main indicators conveying the complexity of measuring the success of a plant translocation.  He described abundance as incorporating establishment, vegetative growth, fecundity and population size.  I am sure that I am not alone in relying the the last measure rather too heavily in the past. The measure of extent constitutes number and distribution of populations but also importantly, includes dispersal.  Resilience results from genetic diversity, resistance to perturbation and dormancy - an avoidance technique particularly useful for plants in strongly fluctuating environments. And finally, persistence is characterized as self-sustainability where the effective (reproducing) population is a realtively large proportion of the overall population size, the ability to utilise more than one microhabitat, and the extent of community 'membership' i.e., are pollinating insects present, has the species become assimilated into a diverse community, and are seed dispersal vectors operating properly?

As Pavlik states, "success cannot come without risk", so indicators of success must be nuanced enough that we can work out where the risk is felt most keenly.  As someone who has based large reviews of reintroductions on coarse measures of presence or absence, I have found that survival only tells a very small part of the story and without a selection of indicators across the four headings described by Pavlik, causes for failure cannot be discerned and adaptive management cannot be undertaken.

• Dalrymple, S.A., Stewart, G.B., and Pullin, A.S. 2011. Are reintroductions an effective way of mitigating against plant extinctions? Collaboration for Environmental Evidence, CEE Review 07-008 (SR 32). (http://www.environmentalevidence.org/Documents/Completed_Reviews/SR32.pdf).

Godefroid S, Piazza C, Rossi G, Buord S, Stevens AD, Aguraiuja R, Cowell C, Weekley CW, Vogg G, Iriondo JM, Johnson I, Dixon B, Gordon D, Magnanon S, Valentin B, Bjureke K, Koopman R, Vicens M, Virevaire M, Vanderborght T. 2011. How successful are plant species reintroductions? Biol. Conserv. 144(2): 672-682.

• Guerrant, E.O., Jr. 2012. Characterizing two decades of rare plant reintroductions. In Plant reintroduction in a changing climate: promises and perils. Edited by J. Maschinski and K.E. Haskins. Island Press, Washington, D.C. pp. 9–29.

Guerrant, E. O. (2013). The value and propriety of reintroduction as a conservation tool for rare plants. Botany, 91 (5): v–x.

• Pavlik, B.M. 1996. Defining and measuring success. In Restoring diversity: Strategies for the reintroduction of endangered species. Edited by D.A. Falk, C.I. Millar, and M. Olwell. Island Press, Washington, D.C. pp. 127–156.

Translocation digest - May 2013

Conservation translocation projects:

India acts to save Asiatic lion by moving it – but hard work has ... The Guardian "The Gir conservation project has staved off extinction and helped increase population. Thetranslocation is about strengthening conservation prospects and ...

Kiwi Conservation Genetics The Earth Times Only 5 birds formed the nucleus of a translocated colony moved to Kapiti Island ...How to manage a population that needs conserving, yet seems likely to ... Enthusiasts celebrate the anniversary of wolf reintroduction Silver City Sun News Dave Parsons, carnivore conservation biologist and former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Mexican Wolf Recovery Coordinator, was the guest speaker at the 15th Anniversary Lobo Birthday Party, held at the Little Walnut Creek picnic area on Sunday. First eagles for more than 100 years born in Ireland Irish Examiner “The birth of these chicks gives a great boost to the reintroduction project initiated by my Department in conjunction with the Golden Eagle Trust. The principal aim of this project is to re-establish a viable breeding population of white-tailed eagles ... Publications: Scimitar-Horned Oryx Reintroduction Workshop (2012 ... Scimitar-Horned Oryx Reintroduction Workshop (2012) report. Submitted by CBSG on Wed, 2013-05-15 09:27. File: SHO_Chad_WorkshopReport_English_FINAL.pdf ...

Atkinson, K.-L., & Lacroix, C. (2013). Evaluating reintroduction methods for the Gulf of Saint Lawrence aster (Symphyotrichum laurentianum) on Prince Edward Island. Botany, 91, 293–299.

Clements, D. R. (2013). Translocation of rare plant species to restore Garry oak ecosystems in western Canada: challenges and opportunities. Botany, 91, 283–291.

Fant, J. B., Kramer, A., Sirkin, E., & Havens, K. (2013). Genetics of reintroduced populations of the narrowly endemic thistle, Cirsium pitcheri (Asteraceae). Botany, 91, 301–308.

Grewell, B. J., Espeland, E. K., & Fiedler, P. L. (2013). Sea change under climate change: case studies in rare plant conservation from the dynamic San Francisco Estuary. Botany, 91, 309–318.

Guerrant, E. O. (2013). The value and propriety of reintroduction as a conservation tool for rare plants. Botany, 91, v–x.

Rynear, J., Peterson, C. L., & Richardson, M. L. (2013). Variables influencing germination and initial survival of two critically endangered plants: Warea amplexifolia and Lupinus aridorum. Botany, 91, 323–326.

Severns, P. M. (2013). Genetic differentiation in an artificial population of the threatened plant Lupinus oreganus (Fabaceae). Botany, 91, 319–322.

Valderrama, Sandra E., Laura E. Molles, Joseph R. Waas and Hans Slabbekoorn Conservation implications of song divergence between source and translocated populations of the North Island Kōkako JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECOLOGY Volume 50, Issue 3, June 2013. DOI : 10.1111/1365-2664.12094

Meetings: Invitation to 26th International Ornithological Congress Registration and abstract submission is now open for the 2014 IOC in Japan. Please pass this notice on through your networks. Of possible specific interest Symposium S6 is "Avian Reintroductions in Changing Environments", convened by Dr Nagata Hisashi of Niigata University and me. If you have examples of avian translocations (planned, undertaken, successful or not) into modified habitats or in response to changing environments (including Assisted Colonisation) then please consider submitting an abstract. We would be especially interested in projects that make reference to the new (2012) IUCN Reintroduction Guidelines.

Translocations and genetics - a simple summary of a complex subject

This may be a bit of a cop out but I wanted to blog about some of the issues surrounding genetics and translocations and found this post on the excellent Conservation Bytes blog run by Corey Bradshaw.  The author, Dr Salvador Herrando-Perez, has done a much better job than I could so I encourage you to follow the link below:

http://conservationbytes.com/2013/01/14/translocations-genetic-rescue-paradox/

Interdisciplinarity and definitions of reintroduction

I’m sure many of the readers of this blog will be aware of the importance of interdisciplinarity in finding solutions to environmental challenges.  However, I admit that when I was working on the IUCN Guidelines for Reintroductions and Conservation Translocations, I felt that we were writing for an audience of conservation practitioners and while this involved using plain English, it required little consideration of disciplines beyond ecology.  Just how narrow my perspective was, was made clear to me when I attempted to respond to a paper by an environmental historian, Dolly Jørgensen (2011) on the concept of historic range.  The subtlety of the difference between 'historical range' and 'native range ... in historic times' was quite an eye-opener especially if you followed her arguments to conclusion to look at the impact it might have on translocation practice.

On her recommendation, we have adopted the term ‘indigenous range’ as a replacement for the problematic concept of historic range but I found that writing the first the definition of indigenous range was very challenging.  The process of honing this key definition was made much more rigorous by the thought processes I went through in responding to Jørgensen's paper (Dalrymple & Moehrenschlager 2013). Whilst we didn't agree with all her assertions, the process of being challenged was constructive and insightful.

So my message today is that interdisciplinarity is important because it has the potential to throw in a wildcard - something you can't predict but should still be responding to.  It challenges and ultimately improves our actions and in the potentially emotive arena of conservation translocations it should be something we all incorporate from the outset of any species recovery attempt.

Dalrymple, S. E., & Moehrenschlager, A. (2013). “Words matter.” A Response to Jørgensen’s Treatment of Historic Range and Definitions of Reintroduction. Restoration Ecology. doi:10.1111/j.1526-100X.2012.00932.x

Jørgensen, D. (2011). What’s History Got to Do with It? A Response to Seddon's Definition of Reintroduction. Restoration Ecology, 19(6), 705–708. doi:10.1111/j.1526-100X.2011.00834.x

Translocation digest - January 2013

This post is the first of a new monthly digest which will feature brief descriptions of translocation projects and related news.  As those of you who regularly read my blog will know, most of my posts cover a journal article or news story on a particular species or aspect of translocation practice. However, this doesn't do justice to the number of ongoing projects there are and the monthly digest aims to represent this.  As ever, please let me know if you want any projects featuring in the digest or as a longer post - I'm hoping this addition will prove valuable to the translocation community so feedback always welcome.

Translocation projects:

Bighorn sheep not being reintroduced into Bridger Mountains yet KTVQ Billings News Instead of an immediate reintroduction, FWP plans to work with sheep owners in the Bridgers to help reduce the risk of contact between domestic and Bighorn sheep. The aim will be to create a better opportunity for success with a future reintroduction.

Kihansi Spray Toad Reintroduced into its Native Habitat Student Operated Press The Wildlife Conservation Society`s Bronx Zoo, the Toledo Zoo, Tanzanian government, World Bank and other partners have reintroduced 2,000 Kihansi spray toads into the Kihansi Gorge in Tanzania. Changing locations fail to mitigate man-beast conflict, says ... The Sunday Times Sri Lanka By Kumudini Hettiarachchi Translocation of elephants, undertaken to mitigate the human-elephant conflict and conserve elephants, does not reduce the conflict or save elephants but causes an increase in the conflict and deaths of elephants, is the surprising finding of a study conducted in Sri Lanka.

Publications:

Sarah E. Dalrymple & Axel Moehrenschlager (2013).
"Words matter." A response to Jorgensen's treatment of historic range and definitions of reintroduction.
RESTORATION ECOLOGY vol 20 (6) DOI:101111/j. 1526-100X.2012.00932.x

Turlure, C., Radchuk, V., Baguette, M., Meijrink, M., van den Burg, A., De Vries, M. W. and van Duinen, G.-J. (2012), 
Plant quality and local adaptation undermine relocation in a bog specialist butterfly. 
Ecology and Evolution. doi: 10.1002/ece3.427

Sensationalist press coverage - is this always the way the general public will see our work?

This is just a quick post today, and features an article in Engineering & Technology magazine which in turn has quoted me.  I was pretty relieved to see that I'd been quoted appropriately and I come across as a voice of caution.  However, the real reason I'm blogging about it now, is because it raises questions about the 'face' we present to the non-specialist audiences when translocations are covered in the media.

E & T magazine has a print circulation of 180,000, mostly professional engineers, and is published online.  If we assume this is the first time many of these readers have heard about assisted migration, it presents quite a controversial picture.  Importantly, careful reading of this article reveals that it is well-balanced in its portrayal of when out-of-range translocations should be used, but how many people read this sort of article carefully?  Instead, will the take home message to many engineers be that biologists can sort it out - we're not there yet but it won't be long before we can move threatened species with certainty.  Is that the message they will read because that's the message they want to see?

Of course, I don't want to polarise engineers and biologists as 'them and us', we're going to have to work closely to make sure ecosystem functioning is protected whilst we continue to develop the infrastructure to house, educate and employ the 7 billion people on the planet.  But how do we communicate a more nuanced message that can actually achieve results?

Pool, R. (2012). Assisted migration and the ethics of playing  'eco god'. Engineering & Technology Magazine, 7(11). Available at: http://eandt.theiet.org/magazine/2012/11/move-it-or-lose-it.cfm

Have the guidelines really sunk in?

This post features a paper by Irene Perez and co-authors (2012), and is a wake-up call for those of us undertaking translocations as it reports on the lack of compliance with 10 key criteria for evaluating translocation projects. None of the criteria will be new to anyone who has read the IUCN Guidelines on Re-introductions (1998) and so it is pretty shocking to see that the median number of criteria in published studies is three, and in a dataset of Spanish translocations used to avoid publication bias, the median number of criteria used rises only to five. Even if, as the authors acknowledge is possible, the publications and reports neglect to mention criteria that were addressed in any feasibility assessment of translocations, it seems appropriate to expect that a full rationale of every translocation is available for all stakeholders to view.

Perez et al. go on to propose a propose hierarchical decision-making system, represented as a flow chart.  It is sensible and easy to apply to real examples of candidate species for translocation. However, I worry that with all attempts to provide a framework for complex decision processes, some of the important detail is omitted.  Ultimately, the responsibility of properly interpreting the decision-making system is left with the person undertaking a translocation and this framework might be open to misuse whether intentional or not.  For example, the second level of the decision-making system asks if risks are posed to the target species, other species or ecosystems by undertaking a translocation.  As Perez et al. have demonstrated, risk evaluation is not a strong point in the translocation community and the comprehensiveness of risk assessment will vary enormously based on practitioner capacity and data availability. Further, the dichotomous outcome following the question on risk is presented as 'intolerable risk' versus 'tolerable risk' and this is a subjective decision that I know from experience would divide stakeholders in species conservation.

It seems to me that we need to get better at explicitly addressing guideline documents and particularly the area of evaluating risk potential in terms of the target species and other species and the ecosystem at both the donor and recipient sites. We also need to develop robust ways of judging where the balance lies between tolerable and intolerable risks and involve stakeholders in this decision. There is plenty of treatment of risk in the scientific literature but as far as I'm aware (and Perez et al.'s paper would support me on this), few examples of practical assessments of risk prior to a proposed translocation. If someone out there is already doing this please make yourselves known - we need to learn by your example!

Pérez, I., Anadón, J. D., Díaz, M., Nicola, G. G., Tella, J. L., & Giménez, A. (2012). What is wrong with current translocations? A review and a decision-making proposal. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 10(9), 494–501. doi:10.1890/110175

Is host tolerance to pathogens and herbivores is more beneficial than resistance in reintroduced populations?

In just about every set of reintroduction guidelines I’ve ever read, one of the primary recommendations is always to eradicate the threats that caused the extirpation of populations of the target species. However, dealing with threats that have an extensive impact are often impossible to eradicate or limit to a specific location.  In the paper summarised below, Matthew Venesky and his co-authors (Venesky et al. 2012) examine several lines of evidence to look at the incidence of pathogens and herbivores and how reintroductions can be optimised to cope with a threat that can’t easily be controlled.

The paper relies on three concepts to make their argument that particular traits are key to successful translocation of species threatened by non-native pathogens or herbivores: virulence, tolerance and resistance. Virulence is defined "as the per capita effects of a pathogen or herbivore". Host tolerance is expressed as the ability to withstand an attack with little loss of fitness. Resistance refers to the reduction of pathogen or herbivore impact through deterring infection or herbivory, or attacking the pests directly. Tolerance is thought to have a neutral or positive consequence for pest abundance whereas resistance has a negative impact on pathogen or herbivore abundance.

The main thesis is that the generation time of pathogens and herbivores (especially invertebrates) is shorter than that of their hosts and can therefore be subject to selection pressures that are exerted as a result of the negative influence of host resistance. This creates pest populations that evolve countermeasures against resistance mechanisms; the lag in the host response means that reintroduced populations suffer high mortality before developing adequate resistance. Hosts which exhibit tolerance rather than resistance do not place strong selection pressures causing increased virulence, and in some cases may even select for decreased impacts. As a result, captive breeding that selects for tolerant (rather than resistant) individuals for translocation, may maximise the chance that a reintroduction attempt will survive long enough to produce progeny.

The two case studies use examples of non-native organisms to explore how captive breeding might select for tolerance rather than resistance to cope with pathogens and herbivory. The first is the fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) that causes chytridiomycosis and has decimated amphibian populations across the world. Selection for resistance involves several suggested approaches including identifying indicators of infection but minimal loss in fitness.  The second example is the cactus moth (Cactoblastis cactorum) which was succesfully introduced to Australia to reduce the prevalence of non-native prickly pear (Opuntia spp.). Unfortunately, the cactus moth has exhibited similar voracity against two narrow endemic species of cactus in Florida. Selection for tolerant genotypes might involve identifying individuals that drop pads from the main plant when stressed by moth herbivory.

The final section of the paper adds some important caveats to the discussion that shifts in host tolerance may have unexpected consequences such as a trade-off for competitive abilities of the host and the existence of low levels of pathogens and herbivores that could act as a reservoir for invading non-tolerant communities. As a result, Venesky et al. (2012) recommend adaptive managment strategies and using an experimental approach to compare the survival of resistant and tolerant genotypes post translocation.

Venesky, M. D., Mendelson III, J. R., Sears, B. F., Stiling, P., & Rohr, J. R. (2012). Selecting for Tolerance against Pathogens and Herbivores to Enhance Success of Reintroduction and Translocation. Conservation biology, 26(4), 586–592. doi:10.1111/j.1523-1739.2012.01854.x

Decision tools for reintroduction but who actually uses them?

My post today was going to be a summary of a paper by Adam Schapaugh and Andrew Tyre of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on Markov decision processes (MDPs). These enable conservation decision-making by dictating what action should be taken based on the state a system is in, and incorporates a reward for having taken the action. Schapaugh and Tyre have used as one of their examples, an hypothetical reintroduction to demonstrate this. MDPs require the user to describe the state variables, set what actions are associated with all the combinations of state variables, and construct a reward system that means the actions can be optimised to create the best outcome. In the paper this means that a set of state variables (e.g. source population size) affect which actions (e.g. capture and release) are undertaken to produce a target population of a given size through reintroduction.


Schapaugh and Tyre present a way of selecting the most relevant variables to include in order to make the best informed choices using MDPs. Their algorithm chooses the actions that maximises rewards where the rewards are set by the user to match their targets (e.g. creating a population of the target species). The actions which reap largest rewards are selected first; the actions which provide negligible or no reward are removed from the process. There is obvious application to species recovery programmes as a decision tool for when and how to act and this paper seems to present an approach for streamlining this potentially complex process.

I wish I was in a position to comment on the utility of their approach and critique it in a way that would be useful to conservation translocations. However, I am new to MDPs and instead would like to pose the question: who uses MDPs in the real world? This then leads me to ask: how do they (the practitioners) make the jump from algorithms in a paper to policy and implementation? And finally, how long does it take for advances such as the one presented in this paper to be absorbed into practice?

Feel free to comment - the questions above are not rhetorical and are a genuine attempt to understand the use of MDPs in relation to translocations.

Schapaugh, A. W., & Tyre, A. J. (2012). A simple method for dealing with large state spaces. Methods in Ecology and Evolution. doi:10.1111/j.2041-210X.2012.00242.x

First ever 'Reintroduction Biologist' - heralding a new era for the sub-discipline?

Today I read an article on the Chicago Tribune website that named a member of staff at Lincoln Park Zoo as the first ever person to have 'reintroduction biologist' as their job title (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-09-05/entertainment/ct-ent-0906-green-snakes-20120905_1_snakes-lincoln-park-zoo-herpetology).  Given that Phil Seddon, Doug Armstrong and Richard Maloney wrote "there is therefore now a recognizable field of reintroduction biology" only five years ago (Seddon et al. 2007), this represents quite a development and a milestone the translocation community should be aware of.

Hopefully we'll see more people join Allison Sacerdote, the Lincoln Park Zoo employee, as the profession develops.  Perhaps more importantly, we'll see increasing numbers of employees of zoos, botanic gardens and statutory agencies who adopt an 'experimental' approach called for by Seddon et al. (2007) and adopted by Sacerdote. In the featured reintroduction project, she will be comparing 'hard' and 'soft' release techniques in order to develop effective protocols for smooth green snakes in Illinois.

Seddon, P. J., Armstrong, D. P., & Maloney, R. F. (2007). Developing the science of reintroduction biology. Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology, 21(2), 303–12. doi:10.1111/j.1523-1739.2006.00627.x