The effects of captive experience on reintroduction survival in carnivores: A review and analysis Review Article

This review focuses on the success and survivorship of captive-born versus wild-caught carnivores used in reintroductions. Previous reviews have suggested that reintroduction projects using captive-born animals are less likely to be successful than projects translocating wild-caught animals. The purpose of this paper is to examine this statistically and investigate how captivity may affect the survival of reintroduced carnivores. We examined results published in previous reviews, and found evidence to support that reintroduction projects using wild-caught animals are significantly more likely to succeed than projects using captive-born animals. We further compiled our own review of 45 case studies in carnivore reintroduction projects (in 17 species across 5 families) to investigate survival rates rather than overall project ‘success’. We found that (1) wild-caught carnivores are significantly more likely to survive than captive-born carnivores in reintroductions; (2) that humans were the direct cause of death in over 50% of all fatalities and (3) that reintroduced captive-born carnivores are particularly susceptible to starvation, unsuccessful predator/competitor avoidance and disease.