Then, raiding becomes a matter of life or death rather than simply a good foraging strategy. Unfortunately, our progress in controlling baboon crop raiding was too slow and I could see disaster looming for the baboons. Put them in captivity where they would be safe but no longer wild. Or experiment with translocation, which would give them an uncertain chance in the wild. I opted for translocation, in which a population of a wild species is transported from one wild location to another in its historic range.
Introduction puts captive animals into places where they've never lived historically.
Reintroduction also uses captive animals, returning them to their original range, often as part of an effort to restore degraded ecosystems or communities. With translocation, uprooted animals are moved to other parts of their range quickly, so that important skills, behavior and knowledge are not lost in extended captivity. When I first began to consider translocation, there were few primate precedents, and no one really knew what happened to the animals after they were released. Thus, the baboon translocation would have to forge new ground. However, if the baboon translocation worked, it could serve as a model for the conservation of endangered primates, the majority of which live in tropical rain forests.