Key considerations for decision makers and stakeholders when identifying source populations for conservation translocations of fishes

Conservation translocations are undertaken to increase the viability of imperiled organisms and/or restore ecosystem functions or processes. A key step in the conservation translocation process is to decide which source or founder population is most likely to lead to translocation success. Existing guidance to inform this decision includes a variety of considerations, but few documents focus solely on this step. Furthermore, despite the importance of stakeholder engagement to long-term conservation success, guidance for selecting source populations rarely describes approaches for stakeholder inclusion. Herein, we undertook a literature review for fish conservation translocations and summarized key considerations (e.g., genetics, habitat, life history, effects on source or recipient populations and ecosystems, logistical) to be used when selecting candidate source populations. We describe the importance of including stakeholders and recommend that decision makers coproduce the source population decision with them. We propose a structured expert judgment approach to assess the probability that specific aspects of these considerations could be achieved for each candidate source population. Finally, we recommend synthesizing results of the expert judgement process to enable decision makers and, ideally, invited stakeholders to choose which source population(s) based on their previously identified fundamental objectives. Although we developed this approach for fishes, it could be used for other conservation translocation efforts where stakeholder involvement and synthesis of support for different source populations are deemed valuable in the planning process.