Leadership and Management of Wildlife Reintroduction Programs

• Main Author: Sutton, Alexandra E.
• Other Authors: Lopez, Roel R.
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: conservation management; organizational structure; white-tailed sea eagle; wildlife reintroduction
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2009-08-7204

Wildlife reintroduction programs are a type of conservation initiative meant to preserve biodiversity through the restoration of damaged areas and the reintroduction of extirpated species. Unfortunately, such reintroductions have a history of limited success, ad hoc procedures, and little focus on hypothetico-deductive design. This study sought to identify some of the trends in the leadership, management, and structure of wildlife reintroduction programs through the use of a case study and survey. The survey was distributed to reintroduction practitioners and biologists worldwide in an attempt to identify patterns of organizational behavior within the field. Some general trends indicated that most reintroductions had active and monitoring phases of 4 or more years (59% and 75% of respondents respectively), adhered closely to World Conservation Union (IUCN) Reintroduction Guidelines (43% of respondents), had a somewhat hierarchical structure (50% of respondents), held annual long-term goal-setting meetings (56%), observed annual employee evaluations (63%), and underwent project evaluations annually, using both internal (74%) and external (39%) evaluative instruments. Opinion questions regarding the ultimate performance of the project indicated that although 75% of researchers felt that their project had made good progress, only 63% said that a formal evaluation had confirmed this statement.