Returning and restoring biodiversity: guidance on human dimensions

Conservation translocations (CTs) are widely used management interventions to restore locally extinct or augment severely depleted species to promote biodiversity. Restoring a species that has been absent for a number of year involves biological, environmental and social dimensions. The key role of human-wildlife interactions (HWIs) in biodiversity conservation has been recognized by the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Such growing evidence suggests that CT efforts are more likely to succeed in improving ecosystems and benefiting humanity when we understand positive and negative human-wildlife interactions (HWIs). The Human-Wildlife Interactions Working Group (HWIWG) of the IUCN/SSC CTSG facilitates discussions and workshops with practitioners, researchers and academics from across the globe, on a range of aspects of human-wildlife interactions in conservation translocations. The group is producing a set of Guidelines for HWIs in CT to support planning, decision making and monitoring human dimensions of conservation translocation projects. In this presentation I will introduce an overview of these guidelines and discuss their value in promoting long term biodiversity conservation.