Greater consideration of the welfare of individual animals can contribute to population-level conservation success (i.e. healthy individuals result in a healthy population). Conservation, welfare, and ethical issues do not exist in isolation; conservation translocation practitioners identify them as interlinked. There are situations in conservation translocations where individual-level animal welfare concerns and population-level conservation concerns conflict, requiring trade-offs and generating difficult moral dilemmas. Conservation translocation practitioners would like more guidance on incorporating welfare considerations into their programmes, highlighting a need for standardised, taxon-specific guidelines, as well as increased communication among practitioners. Structured decision-making could be a useful approach for balancing or aligning welfare and conservation considerations and would provide transparency as to how these concerns are addressed. Overall, there is demand for increased consideration of individual animal welfare in conservation practice. Open, honest, and critical assessment of the issues is required, together with respectful dialogue, collaboration, and knowledge sharing among stakeholders.

The use of conservation translocations as a transdisciplinary conservation tool to prevent extinction, recover populations, and restore ecological function is on the rise. The growing impact of reintroductions, reinforcements, assisted colonisations, and ecological replacements can be attributed to a number of factors including an escalation of benefits for species, ecosystems, and human communities driven by bold innovations and courageous ambitions of the global conservation translocation community. The inclusion of diverse philosophical perspectives combined with increased need, interest, scope, and policy alignment has driven a broadening of novel approaches, innovations, and tools, but associated aspects can be contentious. To advance conservation impact of conservation translocations, we group eleven of these contentious issues into three broad categories – genes, species, and ecosystems – and then reframe them as growth opportunities. Contentious issues can create conflict, but we suggest that identifying common ground on agreed conservation values, negotiating with respectful kindness, and advancing progress through collaboration will enable powerful advancements for effective conservation translocations in the future.