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canopic jug writes:

Ars Technica is reporting that groups of individual animals from species re-introduced to areas take generations to settle in. Even if they were were once found in that same area it takes multiple generations to re-establish migration routes and other mass movement patterns if the animals had been eradicated from the area and there is no continuity. So the takeaway is that re-introduction requires decades or centuries if the behavior is left unaddressed:

In many areas of the globe, native species have been wiped out of large areas of their range even though some habitats that could support them were left intact or later restored. That has allowed conservationists to reintroduce these species, sometimes with spectacular success. The North American bison, for example, has gradually returned from near extinction largely due to reintroductions from the few small herds that were once left.

But not all of these reintroductions have worked out, and a paper in this week's Science suggests a reason: over generations, native populations develop a "culture" that helps them to understand when and where to migrate. New populations, dropped into an unfamiliar landscape, tend to sit still and don't make the most out of their habitat.

An example with birds was Operation Migration which ran for 25 years and used ultralight aircraft to guide new birds along good migration routes. However, land-bound animals will have a harder time navigating manmade obstacles.

Is ungulate migration culturally transmitted? Evidence of social learning from translocated animals (open, DOI: 10.1126/science.aat0985) (DX)

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