Wildlife reintroduction programs are a type of conservation initiative meant to preserve biodiversity through the restoration of damaged areas and the reintroduction of extirpated species. Unfortunately, such reintroductions have a history of limited success, ad hoc procedures, and little focus on hypothetico-deductive design. Furthermore, past research in the field has focused heavily on identifying biotic agents of success and failure in reintroductions, and little to no research has focused on abiotic components. Within the interdisciplinary literature, however, there is strong evidence that such abiotic factors as the administration, leadership, and organizational structure of a reintroduction program may be influential in achieving success. This exploratory study sought to identify some of the trends in the leadership, management, and structure of wildlife reintroduction programs through the use of a 33-question survey. The survey was distributed to reintroduction practitioners and biologists worldwide, in an attempt to identify patterns of organizational behavior within the field.
Results/Conclusions
Some general trends indicated that most reintroductions had an active phase of 4 or more years (59%), a monitoring phase of 4 or more years (75%), adhered closely to IUCN Reintroduction Guidelines (43%), had a somewhat hierarchical structure (50%), held annual long-term goal-setting meetings (56%), observed annual employee evaluations (63%), and underwent project evaluations annually, using both internal (74%) and external (39%) evaluative instruments. Opinion questions regarding the ultimate performance of the project indicated that although 75% of researchers felt that their project had made good progress, only 63% said that a formal evaluation had confirmed this statement. Clearly, further research is needed to explore the disparity between perceived and real success within reintroduction projects, and to determine the potential influence of management on reintroduction success.
