Wildlife restoration in fragmented landscapes: Trialling wild-to-wild translocation with two common reptiles

Translocations are an increasingly popular conservation tool, although their use to date has been largely reactive, often attempting to stave off the extinction of threatened species. Recently, a more proactive concept of ‘wildlife restoration’ has been proposed, involving regular, short-distance, community-driven translocations of common but patchily distributed species within agricultural and urban landscapes. We trialled this concept by carrying out experimental translocations of two agamid lizard species from the Little Desert National Park in south-eastern Australia, where they are abundant, to fragments of similar habitat in the adjacent agricultural landscape, where they were absent, or occurring in low numbers. Study animals were monitored via radio-telemetry to assess survival, body condition, site fidelity, activity area, movement and microhabitat use of hard-release and soft-release animals compared to control animals. Survival was generally high over the monitoring period (up to 64 days) with only six (16 %) confirmed deaths and was similar between translocation treatments. Body condition, site fidelity, activity area, movement rate, and microhabitat use were similar between translocated and control animals. Lizards subjected to temporary pens (soft-release) exhibited similar outcomes to those released immediately (hard-release). While the assessment of breeding and population establishment necessitates long-term monitoring, our short-term findings highlight the resilience of translocated reptiles, supporting the notion that ‘mainstreaming’ fauna translocations could be a viable and effective conservation intervention.