Quality assessment of mitigation translocation protocols for protected plants in France

Amsterdam

2022

11 S.

Sonderdruck

12920S

40002870

Mitigation translocations are increasingly used worldwide in response to land planning pressures. The quality of translocation protocols and their adjustment to the ecological traits of the transJocated populations are crudal to optimise translocation success. We studied the quality of translocation protocols presented in derogation requests, a mandatory step in France to translocate a protected plant species. We analysed 103 transiocation proposals for 93 different species in 92 files examined between 2018 and 2020. After tracing the history of the place of translocations in legal procedures in France, we assessed each translocation proposal according to an evaluation grid, which involved the quantity and quality of information on plant species and translocation sites in the files and the quality of translocation protocols. We have shown that the translocation protocots are of low quality, with a lot of missing information. The biology and ecology of the species suggested for translocation are not sufficiently known, nor are the ecological charactersstics of the host sites. Derogation requests that received a favourable opinion from fhe assessment body are more likely to propose a protected host site and posttranslocation monitoring. We bclieve (hat, to opümise their outcome, mitigation translocaüons need to be improved upstream, with more detailed protocols and bctter species knowledge. We highly reconunend following the same guideiines for mitigation translocations äs for conservation translocations.Keywords: Plant translacation, Mitigation translocadon, Protocol quäl i Ey, Mitigation hierarchy, Conservation, Environmentai impact assessment