Developing new translocation code for Scotland - a community driven approach?

I have recently begun a contract working with Scottish Natural Heritage, the government agency for nature conservation, and the National Species Reintroduction Forum (NSRF), also in Scotland.  The NSRF is chaired by SNH but consists of a real mix interested parties including conservationists that want to explore ambitious translocation projects, and land owners who are cautious about reintroductions and the implications this has for how they manage their properties.  I've been contracted to produce a code for conservation translocations and a document that details what makes best practice when moving plants and animals for conservation purposes.

In my preparations so far, I've gone back to the IUCN guidelines that I co-authored, and looked in detail again at the best practice guidelines for plant reintroductions presented by Joyce Maschinski and co-authors (in Maschinski & Haskins 2012). These, and other guideline documents I've seen, use a combination of a document containing the key principles with an often longer document or detailed sub-sections, that contain more of the explanatory and/or contextual detail.  In some published literature, decision trees are used to simplify the justification of a reintroduction attempt, in other sources, a simple list of yes/no questions does the same job.

Part of my contract is to ensure that the NSRF is involved in the production of the code and guidance document.  I want to make sure that this is a genuine process of stakeholder engagement and that the NSRF has a sense of ownership of the outputs.  However, all the guidance documents I've been involved in have resulted from a group of conservationists (admittedly including biologists, social scientists, and ethics and legislation experts) producing the guidance and not involving stakeholders such as community groups and land owners/managers until a more or less complete draft has been written.  In some cases, the guidelines are simply aimed at other conservation practitioners and the stakeholders aren't involved except to be consulted when a specific translocation is planned.  The most inclusive example I've seen is the New Zealand guidelines which are the most community-friendly because they make translocations accessible to anyone who would like to explore the feasibility of moving a plant or animal into their local area.  Again though, this isn't a case of involving stakeholders in the development of the actual guidelines themselves - they are still issued by the government department with responsibility for conservation.

So, what works best?  How do you get a diverse group of people and organisations to agree on a code of conduct? And how do we genuinely incorporate their views when we can only meet all interested parties on one occasion?  My first idea is to ask exactly what format would suit the NSRF by presenting some of the examples I've described above but if anyone has any other ideas, please contact me!

Translocation digest - February 2013

Translocation projects:

Sariska to get another tiger after gap of two years
Daily Bhaskar
But, in the last two years, no tiger was translocated to Sariska. Now, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has given a green signal to move a tigress from Ranthambhore.

Cattlemen ask Obama Administration to delay ferret reintroduction plan Agri-Pulse WASHINGTON, January 15, 2013 - The United States Cattlemen's Association (USCA) and other agricultural groups say they need more time to study a controversial plan toreintroduce black-footed ferrets in 12 western states through an "enhancement of of survival" permit under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). A predator's tale: Reintroducing wolves to Oregon has a history that's as ... La Grande Observer The road to reintroducing the wolf has been a long and often bumpy one. Rule Change Designed To Help With Steelhead Reintroduction - KlCC The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is changing a designation to help with thereintroduction of Steelhead to Central Oregon. The NOAA rule ... www.klcc.org/Feature.asp?FeatureID=4148 Appeals court upholds Colo. wolf reintroduction decision || Red ... The overgrown elk population of Rocky Mountain National Park has been kept in check for years by volunteers who shoot the animals, and it's likely to stay that ... rlch.org/.../appeals-court-upholds-colo-wolf-reintroduction-de... reintroduction news | The Return of Native Nordic Fauna European bison (aka the wisent, Bison bonasus) are now in the wild in Germany for the first time since 1746, according to a news article from Christmas Eve.dolly.jorgensenweb.net/nordicnature/?cat=5 Publications: Causes of reintroduction failure of the brown treecreeper ... Victoria A. Bennett1,*,; Veronica A. J. Doerr2,4,; Erik D. Doerr2,4,; Adrian D. Manning1,; David B. Lindenmayer1,; Hwan-Jin Yoon3. Article first published online: ... onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aec.12017/abstract Turlure, C., Radchuk, V., Baguette, M., Meijrink, M., Van den Burg, A., De Vries, M. W., & Van Duinen, G.-J. (2012). Plant quality and local adaptation undermine relocation in a bog specialist butterfly. Ecology and Evolution, n/a–n/a. doi:10.1002/ece3.427 Freemantle, T. P., Wacher, T., Newby, J., & Pettorelli, N. (2013). Earth observation: overlooked potential to support species reintroduction programmes. African Journal of Ecology, n/a–n/a. doi:10.1111/aje.12060 Naish, K. A., Seamons, T. R., Dauer, M. B., Hauser, L. and Quinn, T. P. (2013), Relationship between effective population size, inbreeding and adult fitness-related traits in a steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) population released in the wild. Molecular Ecology. doi: 10.1111/mec.12185 Meetings/Conferences: Assisted Migration: A primer for Reforestation and Restoration ... Title: Assisted Migration: A primer for Reforestation and Restoration Decision Makers Location: World Forestry Center, Portland, OR Date: February 21, 2013 ... www.westernforestry.org/.../assisted-migration-a-primer-for-re...

Planning translocations under a changing climate

Just before Christmas I attended the British Ecological Society Annual Meeting at the University of Birmingham and saw a talk by Alienor Chauvenet of ZSL. Her talk, entitled 'Planning translocations under a changing climate' used the example of the hihi, Notiomystis cincta, to explore some ideas she originally proposed in her paper in Animal Conservation last year (reference below).

Chauvenet noted, as I have in my systematic review of plant reintroductions, that climate change is very rarely cited as a motivation for undertaking translocations. However, climate change is not an issue that should be only be tackled when we discuss the pros and cons of assisted colonisation and other types of conservation introduction. Climate change has the potential to irreversibly alter the distribution of suitable habitat and therefore, needs to be accounted for in translocation projects whether it is a reintroduction or an introduction to new sites.

Both her paper and the BES talk propose a combination of methods to ensure that site selection in translocation projects maximises the success of reintroductions and assisted colonization under climate change. The strength of using a variety of methods to attempt to select translocation sites is made clear in

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

Reintroduction or ecological replacement? Or both?

Firstly, happy new year and apologies for the break in posts as a result of my baby girl falling ill (she's now better) and Christmas. Normal weekly service will now resume and I have a backlog of posts to bring you of which this is the first.

The idea for this post was prompted by a widely-reported paper on the genetic legacy of Lonesome George, the last known purebred individual of Chelonoidis abingdoni, or Galapagos giant tortoise native to Pinta Island (Edwards et al. 2013, authors webpage here). The discovery of individuals with very similar genetic ancestry on another island (Isabela Island) provides hope that hybrids with C. abingdoni parents could be taken into captive breeding programmes to produce tortoises that might be translocated to 'back' Pinta Island. The authors suggest an interesting strategy of tiered translocation whereby any individuals with a very high genetic similarity to the extinct Pinta Island tortoises are saved for the captive breeding whilst hybrids that are further removed (offspring of hybrids rather than purebreds) are moved directly to Pinta, the former constituting reintroduction albeit with a little genetic mixing, the latter being an example of ecological replacement (see page on definitions). This would be motivated by the need to restore giant tortoises as ecosystem engineers and would hopefully improve the habitat quality prior to release of the 'purer' individuals.

On reading this, I went back to another paper from three years ago (Hansen et al. 2010) in which the authors discuss the pros and cons of a range of translocations of large and giant tortoises. Back then, Lonesome George had mated unsuccessfully with females of a similar subspecies but there was still hope that

1 million fish reveal translocation and captive-breeding synergies

The translocation described in this post could be an example of assisted migration although not in the sense that this is a climate change-motivated intervention. The movement of the Chinook salmon described by Holsman et al (2012) is assisting migration by transporting fish passed hydroelectric dams from the spawning headwaters to the ocean. As someone who has worked with threatened species and the small numbers of individuals this normally entails, I am envious of their sample size - over 1 million tagged fish made up the dataset and allowed an exceptional number of explanatory variables and interactions to be explored.


Key to their findings are the fact that their million fish represented wild and captively reared individuals, and translocated fish (moved down river) and non-translocated fish (in-river migrants) in all combinations over the period 1998 - 2006. They found that the origin of the fish and whether they were translocated around the hydropower schemes interacted synergistically on fish mortality: captive-reared fish benefited from being transported while wild fish were detrimentally affected by translocation. The latter occurred despite the fact that transportation should minimise deaths associated with migrating through hydropower systems.


The authors go on to explore a range of factors affecting survival in the marine environment before concluding with three important recommendations for management. Firstly, that the effects of management and environment can interact and this must be considered at the outset of any conservation programme. Secondly, that the survival translocated or captive-bred populations cannot be predicted from survival of wild populations because the intervention can alter some of the key phenological, behavioural, genetic and demographic parameters of a cohort. Thirdly, and I feel most importantly, practitioners should adopt an adaptive management approach. Whilst Holsman et al (2012) have the benefit of 1 million fish in their dataset, all translocation projects can improve the ability to identify and respond to unexpected and detrimental outcomes if translocated plants and animals are followed throughout the translocation programme on an individual basis.  As a systematic reviewer of plant reintroductions, I can vouch for this recommendation - survival analysis of an entire cohort is much more diagnostically powerful than samples of an already small population. However, I know it is easier said than done if you are say, trying to reintroduce a plant using seed, but it's not impossible and the rewards for the success of the project are more than worth it.

Holsman, K. K., Scheuerell, M. D., Buhle, E., & Emmett, R. (2012). Interacting Effects of Translocation, Artificial Propagation, and Environmental Conditions on the Marine Survival of Chinook Salmon from the Columbia River, Washington, U.S.A. Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology, 26(5), 912–922. doi:10.1111/j.1523-1739.2012.01895.x

Definitions of conservation translocation

This post is just to highlight the fact that I've updated the 'definitions' page on this blog (see top tabs to find the different pages).  Definitions are key to a discipline such as this one, where confusion in terminology generates a host of uncertainties about the motivations, appropriate methods and policy implications for species conservation.  For this reason, the IUCN Task Force charged with revising and expanding the Guidelines for Reintroductions and Other Conservation Translocations spent a great deal of time scrutinising the definitions and testing their applicability under a range of scenarios and case-studies.

The new definitions for conservation translocations include a shift from 'historic range' to 'indigenous range' and the following interventions:

• Population Restoration - including reinforcement and reintroduction
• Conservation Introduction - including assisted colonisation and ecological replacement

The full Guidelines are available in an interim version just now (please email me if you would like this version) but will be freely available on the IUCN Re-introductions Specialist Group website in the final format soon.  There are also plans underway for translation of the Guidelines into several languages and hard-copies to be made available.

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