Surveys of recent (1973 to 1986) intentional releases of native birds and mammals to the wild in Australia, Canada, Hawaii, New Zealand, and the United States were conducted to document current activities, identify factors associated with success, and suggest guidelines for enhancing future work. Nearly 700 translocations were conducted each year. Native game species constituted 90 percent of translocations and were more successful (86 percent) than were translocations of threatened, endangered, or sensitive species (46 percent). Knowledge of habitat quality, location of release area within the species range, number of animals released, program length, and reproductive traits allowed correct classification of 81 percent of observed translocations as successful or not.

The Arctic climate is changing. Permafrost is warming, hydrological processes are changing and biological and social systems are also evolving in response to these changing conditions. Knowing how the structure and function of arctic terrestrial ecosystems are responding to recent and persistent climate change is paramount to understanding the future state of the Earth system and how humans will need to adapt. Our holistic review presents a broad array of evidence that illustrates convincingly; the Arctic is undergoing a system-wide response to an altered climatic state. New extreme and seasonal surface climatic conditions are being experienced, a range of biophysical states and processes influenced by the threshold and phase change of freezing point are being altered, hydrological and biogeochemical cycles are shifting, and more regularly human sub-systems are being affected. Importantly, the patterns, magnitude and mechanisms of change have sometimes been unpredictable or difficult to isolate due to compounding factors. In almost every discipline represented, we show Climatic Change (2005) 72: 251-298 how the biocomplexity of the Arctic system has highlighted and challenged a paucity of integrated scientific knowledge, the lack of sustained observational and experimental time series, and the technical and logistic constraints of researching the Arctic environment. This study supports ongoing efforts to strengthen the interdisciplinarity of arctic system science and improve the coupling of large scale experimental manipulation with sustained time series observations by incorporating and integrating novel technologies, remote sensing and modeling.

In 1993 we conducted a follow‐up study of the 1987 survey by Griffith et al. (1989) of 421 avian and mammalian translocation programs in North America, Australia, and New Zealand to reassess the programs’ status and the biological and methodological factors associated with success. Our survey response rate was 81%. Approximately 38% of usable programs in 1993 reported a change in outcome from 1987 (e.g., a translocated population was “declining” but now is “self‐sustaining”), but the difference between the overall success rates was not statistically significant (66% in 1987 and 67% in 1993). Since 1987, an increase was observed in the median number of animals translocated per program (31.5 to 50.5), median duration of releases (2 to 3 years), and proportion of programs releasing more than 30 animals (46% to 68%). Multiple logistic regression analyses indicated that release into the core of the historical range, good‐to‐excellent habitat quality, native game species, greater numbers of released animals, and an omnivorous diet were positively associated with translocation success. Moreover, our results indicate that translocated birds were less successful at establishing self‐sustaining populations than translocated mammals. Our findings, using comparable logistic analyses, generally corroborate the results of Grifftth et al. (1989). Variables not found to be significantly correlated with translocation success include species’ reproductive potential (number of offspring and first age of reproduction), number and duration of the releases, and source of the translocated animals (wild‐caught versus captive‐reared).

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