No abstract

These data are coming from the derogation requests for the destruction of protected species in the context of construction or development work in France. These derogation requests include, among other things, the contents of an environmental impact assessment and the costs of the measures suggested to reduce the impact on the environment. In the article connected to this dataset, we studied the quality of the plant translocation protocols proposed in 95 derogation files (see Julien et al., 2022). We additionally collected during the reading of the files data that we make available here about the costs of (i) the total project, (ii) the mitigation hierarchy and (iii) the plant translocation operations and monitoring. These data complement our aforementioned paper by documenting how much translocations cost and in what proportion of the other costs reported in the projects we evaluated for quality. These data can be helpful for environmental stakeholders but also to further studies to determine the extent to which the environment is considered in land planning.

No abstract

Many countries have legislation intended to limit or offset the impact of anthropogenic disturbance and development on threatened plants. Translocations are often integral to those mitigation policies. When translocation is used exclusively to mitigate development impacts, it is often termed a ‘mitigation translocation.’ However, both the terminology and processes vary regarding interpretation and application, resulting in inconsistent standards, often leading to poorly planned and implemented projects. These mitigation projects rarely achieve the intended ‘no net loss’ of protected species due to issues with timelines and procedures that result in the mortality of translocated individuals. Instead, such projects are often process driven, focused on meeting legislative requirements which enable the development to proceed, rather than meaningful attempts to minimise the ecological impact of developments and demonstrate conservation outcomes. Here, we propose to reframe mitigation translocations as conservation driven, ensuring best practice implementation and hence, a quantified no net loss for impacted species. These methods include redefining the term mitigation translocation to include conservation objectives and outlining issues associated with the mitigation translocation processes worldwide. We also nominate global standards of practice to which all proposals should adhere, to ensure each project follows a trajectory towards quantified success, with genuine impact mitigation. These proposed standards focus on building efficient translocation plans and improving governance to facilitate a transition from project centred to ecology-driven translocation. Employment of these standards is relevant to development proponents, government regulators, researchers, and translocation practitioners and will increase the likelihood of conservation gains within the mitigation translocation sector.

Species translocations are increasingly used to improve the conservation status of threatened species, restore communities, or in response to mitigation hierarchy. Post-translocation monitoring is an essential step in any translocation protocol, as only demographic data collected over a sufficiently long period can be used to estimate whether a translocated population is viable and thus determine whether translocation is successful. We gathered European monitoring data from 575 plant translocation units to document monitoring time and determine how it varies. We examined this variation by translocation motivation between conservation-driven translocations (undertaken outside the mitigation hierarchy) and mitigation-driven translocations. We also compared the monitoring time to the type of biological material translocated and the number of individuals.We show that mitigation-driven translocations were more monitored in the first few years after translocation but for a shorter time than conservation-driven translocations. The same was observed for translocations made with diaspores compared to translocations made with plants.Moreover, monitoring time increased with the number of translocated plants but not with the number of diaspores. Although conservation-driven and mitigation-driven translocation programs exhibited distinct temporal monitoring patterns, both motivations of translocations were associated with rapid discontinuation of the monitoring. Indeed, after four years monitoring continued in only 37.9% of nonextinct population units. After ten years, this percentage falls to 11.8%. We recommend that translocations be monitored more assiduously over longer periods, and that the monitoring data be readily available to improve future translocations.

One of the central issues in conservation today is identifying areas rich in biodiversity for priority conservation. On a global scale, the Mediterranean area is a biodiversity hotspot and, locally, Corsica contains high biodiversity with interesting sites for conservation. An inventory of flora was undertaken on the Solenzara military airbase. Five hundred and fifty-two plant species were inventoried, which represent an important species richness. Amongst these species, certain are rare or endemic. A large population of Serapias neglecta subsp. neglecta was found and the size of this population was estimated. This species is localised at a global scale and has a protection status. This is the largest population known, with more than 155,000 individuals on the 550 ha of the airbase. Nineteen plant species have national protection status and 15 are classified as invasive alien species. The Solenzara airbase has a role in conserving many species; a management plan would be appropriate.