Humans have moved organisms between
sites for their own purposes for millennia.
This has yielded benefits for human kind,
but in some cases has led to disastrous
impacts. IUCN stated its perspective
on such moves with its 1987 Position
Statement on the Translocation of Living
Organisms. Subsequently, the Species
Survival Commission’s Reintroduction
Specialist Group developed policy
guidelines that were approved by IUCN’s
Council in 1995 and published in 1998 as
the IUCN Guidelines for Reintroduction1.
The Guidelines were short and practical
in focus and have been used by other
SSC Specialist Groups to derive more
detailed Guidelines for their own taxa and
purposes2.