Genetic management is essential for sustainable captive populations. Understanding studbook management and its welfare implications helps assess conservation breeding programmes.
Genetic management in captive breeding creates welfare trade-offs. Animals recommended for transfer to maintain genetic diversity experience transport stress, new social environments, and potentially repeated disruption of established bonds. The welfare cost of these transfers is real and must be weighed against their genetic benefit. High-welfare genetic management minimises transfer stress, prepares animals for transport appropriately, and monitors welfare post-transfer carefully. Cryopreservation offers a welfare-positive alternative for genetic preservation that reduces the need for live animal transfers.