Assisted migration
Translocation in wildlife conservation is the capture, transport and release or introduction of species, habitats or other ecological material (such as soil) from one location to another. It contrasts with reintroduction, a term which is generally used to denote the introduction into the wild of species from captive stock. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) catalogues translocation projects for threatened species around the globe.
Translocation can be an effective management strategy and important topic in conservation biology, but despite their popularity, translocations are a high‐cost endeavor with a history of failures. It may decrease the risk of extinction by increasing the range of a species, augmenting the numbers in a critical population, or establishing new populations. Translocation may also improve the level of biodiversity in the ecosystem.
Translocation may be expensive and is often subject to public scrutiny, particularly when the species involved is charismatic or perceived as dangerous (for example wolf reintroduction). Translocation as a tool is used to reduce the risk of a catastrophe to a species with a single population, to improve genetic heterogeneity of separated populations of a species, to aid the natural recovery of a species or re-establish a species where barriers might prevent it from doing so naturally. It is also used to move ecological features out of the way of development.
Several critically endangered plant species in the southwestern Western Australia have either been considered for translocation or trialled. Grevillea scapigera is one such case, threatened by rabbits, dieback and degraded habitat. The rarest marsupial in the world, Gilbert's potoroo, has been successfully translocated to remote islands in Western Australia as "insurance populations".
Translocation is a traditional, if rarely used, conservation tool.
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Rewilding is a form of ecological restoration aimed at increasing biodiversity and restoring natural processes. It differs from ecological restoration in that, while human intervention may be involved, rewilding aspires to reduce human influence on ecosystems. It is also distinct in that, while it places emphasis on recovering geographically specific sets of ecological interactions and functions that would have maintained ecosystems prior to human influence, rewilding is open to novel or emerging ecosystems which encompass new species and new interactions.
Species reintroduction is the deliberate release of a species into the wild, from captivity or other areas where the organism is capable of survival. The goal of species reintroduction is to establish a healthy, genetically diverse, self-sustaining population to an area where it has been extirpated, or to augment an existing population. Species that may be eligible for reintroduction are typically threatened or endangered in the wild.