No abstract

Despite rapid growth in the field of reintroduction biology, results from scientific research are often not applied to translocations initiated when human land‐use change conflicts with the continued persistence of a species' population at a particular site. Such mitigation‐driven translocations outnumber and receive more funding than science‐based conservation translocations, yet the conservation benefit of the former is unclear. Because mitigation releases are economically motivated, outcomes may be less successful than those of releases designed to serve the biological needs of species. Translocation as a regulatory tool may be ill‐suited for biologically mitigating environmental damage caused by development. Evidence suggests that many mitigation‐driven translocations fail, although the application of scientific principles and best practices would probably improve the success rate. Lack of transparency and failure to document outcomes also hinder efforts to understand the scope of the problem. If mitigation‐driven translocations are to continue as part of the growing billion‐dollar ecological consulting industry, it is imperative that the scale and effects of these releases be reported and evaluated.

The zoo scientific community was among the first to focus attention on captivityinduced stereotypic behaviors, their causes, and methods of eradication. Environmental enrichment has emerged recently as the main husbandry tool for tackling this problem. An increasing number of research publications have attempted to evaluate the effectiveness of enrichment in reducing stereotypic behavior and to develop further concepts to explain how effective enrichment works. A review and meta-analysis of this literature indicates that enrichment is a successful technique for reducing stereotypic behavior in zoo animals. Enrichment was associated with significant reduction in stereotypy performance about 53% of the time. Published enrichment and stereotypy research is lacking for most zoo species, with most studies on large, charismatic, and often endangered species, but it is unclear whether stereotypies are more prevalent in these species. In addition, problems with scientific methods and data presentation, quantitatively detailed in this work, severely limit the conclusions drawn from zoo research. Further understanding of what kinds of enrichment works and what doesn't will require greater attention to experimental design, sample size, statistical analysis, and better descriptions of enrichment properties and the form of stereotypy. We recommend that future studies focus on increasing sample size (e.g., through multi-institutional studies), appropriate repeated measures design (e.g., with multiple baseline and experimental phases), providing full statistical information about the behavioral changes observed (including standard error), and ultimately the development of a predictive science for enrichment, stereotypies, and wellbeing.

Poor communication between academic researchers and wildlife managers limits conservation progress and innovation. As a result, input from overlapping fields, such as animal behaviour, is underused in conservation management despite its demonstrated utility as a conservation tool and countless papers advocating its use. Communication and collaboration across these two disciplines are unlikely to improve without clearly identified management needs and demonstrable impacts of behavioural-based conservation management. To facilitate this process, a team of wildlife managers and animal behaviour researchers conducted a research prioritisation exercise, identifying 50 key questions that have great potential to resolve critical conservation and management problems. The resulting agenda highlights the diversity and extent of advances that both fields could achieve through collaboration.