Translocation has been utilised as a tool to facilitate species conservation and is defined as the deliberate movement of organisms from one site for release in another.
It must be intended to yield a measurable conservation benefit at the levels of a population, species or ecosystem and not only provide benefit to translocated individuals (IUCN 2013).
Greater than 10% of the 273 Australian endemic terrestrial mammal species have been lost over the past 200 yr and 21% are assessed as threatened (Woi- narski et al. 2015). Conservation translocations (CTs) are an important tool used in the recovery efforts for many of these species. In Australia, CTs have been most commonly undertaken by government agencies, either for species recovery or ecosystem restoration (Armstrong et al. 2015). The first reported CTs began in the 1970s (Morris et al. 2015). Prior to 2009, an estimated 380 vertebrate translocations occurred in Australia, the majority of which involved marsupials (Short 2009). For many conservation programs, disease has not been, and in some cases is still not, formally considered. Of 58 published Australian wildlife translocations in the past 40 yr, only 20 (35%) used any level of disease management (Dunlop 2015). This was often despite the potential contribution of disease as a threatening process in the initial decline of the species (Short 2009). Furthermore, followup monitoring to determine whether disease affected the translocation outcome was rarely carried out (Moro et al. 2015). There have been several cases, both nationally and internationally, where disease outbreaks have been associated with mammal translocations (see Woodford and Rossiter 1994 for examples).Disease risk analysis (DRA) is a process for identifying significant disease risks and proposes measures to mitigate these risks. DRA is most frequently carried out in association with CTs (e.g. Jakob-Hoff et al. 2014b), but has also been applied to investigating the potential role of disease in native mammal declines (Pacioni et al.
2015; Reiss et al. 2015). This chapter will define and discuss diseases and parasites and current practical methodology to undertake DRA in the Australian context. The risk analysis framework comprises: problem description, hazard identification, risk assessment, risk management, implementation and review, and at every step, risk communication (Jakob-Hoff et al. 2014a) (Fig. 3.1). In the past, ‘risk assessment’ and ‘risk analysis’ were used interchangeably. However, risk assessment is a subcomponent of DRA and should be discouraged in favour of a complete risk analysis.At present there is no specific national legislation for native mammal translocations in Australia. Regulations and legislation are, instead, embodied within numerous national, state and territory legislation, conventions and regulations aimed primarily to protect Australia’s agricultural and environmental assets, internationally recognised threatened species and the welfare of animals (Nally and Adams 2015). This is likely a result of jurisdictional
Fig. 3.1. Summarised components and progression of disease risk analysis proposed by Jakob-Hoff etal. (2014a).
divisions whereby states and territories are generally responsible for animal welfare and wildlife protection, while biosecurity, wildlife trade and national level environmental impact assessment activities are a Commonwealth responsibility. State and territory legislation also exists to control individual’s actions in regard to listed threatened species, ecological communities and biodiversity conservation (Nally and Adams 2015). Given the majority of translocations are undertaken in collaboration with state or territory wildlife agencies, it is recommended that any legislative and regulatory queries be directed to these agencies. Ideally, a national legislative framework to provide consistent governance over wildlife health management should be formulated, especially where translocations cross state and territory boundaries.
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