Research overview: the efficacy and ethics of translocating conflict big cats

This overview synthesises the contested evidence on translocating conflict big cats, capturing and releasing them elsewhere, as a management response. It reviews studies, prominently from Indian leopard systems, showing that translocation can increase attacks by stressing and disorienting animals, moving problem behaviour to naive areas, and disrupting resident territorial structure, while sometimes offering a politically necessary alternative to killing. The literature weighs animal-welfare concerns, homing behaviour, post-release survival, and release-site impacts. The survey frames translocation as frequently ineffective or counterproductive for resolving conflict, increasingly discouraged in favour of in-situ management, yet still widely used under social and political pressure to be seen to act after incidents.