Cosa rende un programma di reintroduzione un successo?

During the past decades, human activities and the ever so fast globalisation have led to deep modifications of our Planet and its balances, impacting on the already fragile processes regulating ecosystems. These constant alterations caused important changes in the climate and on habitats, directly affecting the well-being of animal species and resulting in an increase in the number of extinctions, both on a local and on a global scale. As this constant loss in species furthermore worsens the already ongoing biodiversity crisis, thus fueling a vicious cycle, tools have been designed to reverse this trend. Amongst these tools, reintroduction programmes have consistently gained traction in the past years, with the intent of re-establishing extinct populations in previously native ranges. The purpose of this thesis is to analyse whether these kinds of projects can be considered an effective tool in counteracting biodiversity loss and, if not, to propose possible solutions that could benefit the practice as a whole. A standardised literature search using the Web of Science Core Collection Database was conducted, identifying a total of 35 different articles pertaining to reintroduction programmes of bird species carried out throughout Europe. Chosen studies were further analysed in order to gain knowledge on the different techniques utilised during conservation translocations, on their frequencies and their effectiveness. Through this analysis it emerged that, although many programmes have proved successful, there are nonetheless many recurring problems and ongoing biases that need to be addressed to increase the chances of successful reintroduction. Common issues mostly arise from the lack of clearly set a priori goal, lack of standardised monitoring and documentation processes and approximate feasibility studies, in addition to the presence of a taxonomic bias in choosing which species to reintroduce and a positive outcome bias in final publications. Although these factors currently have a negative impact on the success rate of reintroduction biology, the practice still holds potential to become an effective tool in contributing to reverse the trend in biodiversity loss, if only effective solutions were to be standardised and consistently set in place.