Dr. Axel Moehrenschlager, Chair, IUCN Species Survival Commission Conservation Translocation Specialist Group

“Amphibians are rich in diversity, important in function, and cherished by many around the world.  They are also desperately in need of our help.  Fortunately, conservation translocations have already helped save many from certain extinction.  Going forward, many more species will benefit from such innovative approaches.  I am so grateful for the relentless effort of all collaborators towards the production of the IUCN SSC Amphibian Conservation Translocation Guidelines.  Built upon the best science and applied practice around the world, the use of these guidelines will enable conservationists to escalate powerful actions to further benefit amphibians and the precious ecosystems that they support.”

Amphibians are the most threatened vertebrates in the world, with The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species listing 40% of species threatened with extinction. As populations dwindle and become extinct, translocations have become a challenging, but necessary, conservation tool for imperiled amphibian species.

In recent decades the number of amphibian conservation and mitigation translocations has dramatically increased. To ensure that such measures have the highest chance of success the IUCN Conservation Translocation and Amphibian Specialist Groups have prepared the IUCN guidelines for amphibian reintroductions and other conservation translocations to provide best practice recommendations. These guidelines are a cumulative effort of many dedicated individuals and organizations; they have been produced with the aim of collecting and synthesizing lessons learned from past initiatives, resulting in guiding principles for present and future amphibian translocation projects.

The guidelines cover the reasons for conducting amphibian translocations, pre-translocation planning and risk assessment, and also cover important topics such as disease, welfare, human social dimensions, post-release monitoring and reporting results. To provide real life examples, twenty-five amphibian case studies from the Global Reintroduction Perspectives series (2008 to 2021) have been included as references for recent and past projects.

We hope that these guidelines will assist amphibian translocation practitioners to help plan, implement, and evaluate their release projects, and further lessons learned can be included in updated future versions of these Guidelines. This document will be available as a free download in PDF format from the IUCN, Conservation Translocation, and Amphibian Specialist Groups websites.