COMMUNITY TRANSLOCATION IN BRITAIN - SETTING OBJECTIVES AND MEASURINGCONSEQUENCES

'Community' or 'habitat translocation' is widely used to move communit ies which are to be destroyed by a change in land use. Controversy ove r the efficacy of community translocation reflects confusion over, and poor setting of, objectives. This paper examines alternative objectiv es for translocations and in a review of 24 British translocations sho ws that changes in plant and animal communities following translocatio n were ubiquitous. In some cases these changes were minor, but many sh owed major changes which were linked to disturbance during translocati on, environmental differences between the receptor and the donor sites , and poor aftercare and management. Invertebrate communities always s howed large post-translocation changes. There is a high risk that comm unity translocation will not achieve the preservation, unchanged, of a complete community and thus cannot replace insitu conservation. With care however, one should be able to use this technique to create a com munity which resembles the pre-translocated state in mitigation for th e loss of the original community and which retains many of the species found at the donor site. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights re served.