Translocations are a common conservation and management strategy, but despite their popularity, translocations are a high‐cost endeavor with a history of failures. It is therefore imperative to maximize their success by learning from our collective experience. The Global Re‐introduction Perspectives Series is a collection of conservation translocation case studies, generated by the IUCN’s Conservation Translocation Specialist Group, and presented in a structured format with an emphasis on practical information. All 293 animal translocation case studies to date include a section in which the authors list the difficulties they have faced during the translocation project, with over 1200 difficulties described so far. We reviewed all difficulties reported in the series to get insights into the common perceived difficulties faced by wildlife managers during animal translocations. The most reported‐upon problems had to do with animal behavior, followed by monitoring difficulties, lack of funding, quality of release habitat, lack of baseline knowledge and lack of public support. We scrutinized each of these difficulties to highlight future research directions that are most likely to improve translocation success, and put a special emphasis on difficulties stemming from animal behavior, and on solutions that may alleviate these problems and improve conservation translocation success world‐wide.

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Foraging animals have several tools for managing the risk of predation, and the foraging games between them and their predators. Among these, time allocation is foremost, followed by vigilance and apprehension. Together, their use influences a forager's time allocation and giving-up density (GUD) in depletable resource patches. We examined Allenby's gerbils (Gerbilus andersoni allenbyi) exploiting seed resource patches in a large vivarium under varying moon phases in the presence of a red fox (Vulpes vulpes). We measured time allocated to foraging patches electronically and GUDs from seeds left behind in resource patches. From these, we estimated handling times, attack rates and quitting harvest rates (QHRs). Gerbils displayed greater vigilance (lower attack rates) at brighter moon phases (full , wane , wax , new). Similarly, they displayed higher GUDs at brighter moon phases (wax . full . new . wane). Finally, gerbils displayed higher QHRs at new and waxing moon phases. Differences across moon phases not only reflect changing time allocation and vigilance, but changes in the state of the foragers and their marginal value of energy. Early in the lunar cycle, gerbils rely on vigilance and sacrifice state to avoid risk; later they defend state at the cost of increased time allocation; finally their state can recover as safe opportunities expand. In the predator-prey foraging game, foxes may contribute to these patterns of behaviours by modulating their own activity in response to the opportunities presented in each moon phase.

The trade-off between the need to obtain new knowledge and the need to use that knowledge to improve performance is one of the most basic trade-offs in nature, and optimal performance usually requires some balance between exploratory and exploitative behaviors. Researchers in many disciplines have been searching for the optimal solution to this dilemma. Here we present a novel model in which the exploration strategy itself is dynamic and varies with time in order to optimize a definite goal, such as the acquisition of energy, money, or prestige. Our model produced four very distinct phases: Knowledge establishment, Knowledge accumulation, Knowledge maintenance, and Knowledge exploitation, giving rise to a multidisciplinary framework that applies equally to humans, animals, and organizations. The framework can be used to explain a multitude of phenomena in various disciplines, such as the movement of animals in novel landscapes, the most efficient resource allocation for a start-up company, or the effects of old age on knowledge acquisition in humans.

Poor communication between academic researchers and wildlife managers limits conservation progress and innovation. As a result, input from overlapping fields, such as animal behaviour, is underused in conservation management despite its demonstrated utility as a conservation tool and countless papers advocating its use. Communication and collaboration across these two disciplines are unlikely to improve without clearly identified management needs and demonstrable impacts of behavioural-based conservation management. To facilitate this process, a team of wildlife managers and animal behaviour researchers conducted a research prioritisation exercise, identifying 50 key questions that have great potential to resolve critical conservation and management problems. The resulting agenda highlights the diversity and extent of advances that both fields could achieve through collaboration.