Disease risks associated with wildlife translocation projects

Translocation is defined as the movement of living organisms from one area for free release in another. Throughout the world, increasing numbers of native and exotic species are translocated every year. Most of these movements involve native mammals, birds and fish, and are made by private and national wildlife agencies to augment existing populations, usually for sporting purposes. The translocation of endangered species, often to reintroduce them into a part of the historical range from which they have been extirpated, has also become an important conservation technique. The success of potentially expensive, high-profile wildlife translocation projects depends to a large extent on the care with which wildlife biologists and their veterinary advisers evaluate the suitability of the chosen release site, and on the ability of the translocated animals to colonise the area. The veterinary aspects of reintroduction projects are proving to be of extreme importance. There are already instances of inadequate disease risk assessment resulting in expensive failures and, worse still, the introduction of destructive pathogens into naive resident wildlife populations. In this paper, some of the disease risks attending wildlife translocation projects are described and suggestions are made for the development of systematic procedures to reduce these risks both at the source of the founder animals and at the proposed release site.