Amphibian captive breeding programmes 385


with a budget of a few thousand USD per year and keeping as few as 20 individuals of one species. The largest pro- grammes had teams of over 10 staff, keeping up to 4,000 in- dividuals of up to 16 species and with budgets between USD 100,000–1,000,000 per year. There was no association be- tween the type of institution and the size of a programme or number of staff. Five programmes were performing reintroductions and


another four conducting release trials. The reintroduction programmes had budgets of USD 5,000–50,000, kept up to three species and employed up to three staff members. Three were independent programmes, one in a zoo and one in a university. The programmes had commenced in 2015, 2009, 2005, 2002 and 1991 (the latter ended successfully after 7 years). Three reported their releases had a positive impact on wild populations, and two were uncertain of the outcome. Of the three programmes with large budgets, two had not completed reintroductions, and one had per- formed one release trial. All three large programmes had operated for c. 10 years.


Programme partners


The four most important partners to programmes were zoos, the Amphibian Ark, government authorities and NGOs (Fig. 1a). Of the 13 partner zoos, eight were located out of country, five in the USA. Four of the seven partner NGOs were international. The most frequently provided resources by partners were (in rank order) funding, infor- mation and expertise, fieldwork and assistance, and training (Fig. 1b). Each partner commonly provided several resources.


Barriers and enablers


During the thematic analysis, we identified 13 themes com- prising 94 categories and 33 subcategories (Fig. 2; Supple- mentary Material 4). The number of times a category was mentioned did not necessarily indicate its significance. For example, only one manager mentioned lack of access to medicine to treat the programme’s amphibians, but this was perceived as a critical barrier. Critical barriers were di- verse (Fig. 3). Although material and financial resources were common barriers and enablers, human and institu- tional factors such as relationships and capacity were par- ticularly common and often also critical. Four categories were both common and critical barriers and enablers: wild habitat conditions, public relations, government relations and captive environmental control systems. Despite some commonalities, most programmes faced unique barriers.


Operational model


A key theme that emerged was managers' desire to take a programme to the next stage in its development. Many


FIG. 1 (a) Partner types ranked by per cent of respondents identifying them as one of their three most important, and (b) resource types ranked by per cent of partners that provided them.


managers had achieved a subset of their goals, but oper- ational challenges, such as poor adaptability or a lack of spe- cific resources, hindered progress towards reintroductions. Based on this finding, we developed a two-part operational model (sensu Knight et al., 2006; Fig. 4), presenting a syn- thetic interpretation of commonly perceived barriers and enablers. Both models are simplifications of complex sys- tems but include four key stages necessary for any captive breeding programme that aims to reintroduce individuals into the wild.


Oryx, 2021, 55(3), 382–392 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605320000332


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