Decision-Making in Animal Conservation Translocations: Biological Considerations and Beyond

Biological considerations are often a major focus in conservation translocations: they include the physiological, behavioural, demographic, and ecological considerations relevant to management decisions about translocation planning, implementation, and evaluation. The vast array of biological, and other, considerations that managers must wrestle with render conservation translocations exceedingly complex, and a framework that supports thinking through this complexity to inform decisions in a transparent and deliberative fashion is indispensable. Structured decision-making (SDM) is a framework that is well suited to help managers deal with the complexity of their decisions, and SDM facilitates the integration of science (biological knowledge) to inform decisions. Scientists supporting conservation translocations have many tools at their disposal to help them provide predictions of management outcomes that are as accurate as possible, recognising that various sources of data are valid, and there is substantial guidance available on the appropriate methods to obtain, analyse, and interpret available data. Decisions will represent a mix of objective scientific prediction and subjective attitudes regarding trade-offs between objectives and regarding the uncertainty surrounding predictions. All conservation translocation decisions can be informed using SDM irrespective of their focus being biological, non-biological, and perhaps most realistically a mix across these concerns.