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A major component of human-induced global change is the deliberate or accidental translocation of species from their native ranges to alien environments^,, where they may cause substantial environmental and economic damage^,. Thus we need to understand why some introductions succeed while others fail. Successful introductions tend to be concentrated in certain regions, especially islands and the temperate zone, suggesting that species-rich mainland and tropical locations are harder to invade because of greater biotic resistance^,,,,,. However, this pattern could also reflect variation in the suitability of the abiotic environment at introduction locations for the species introduced^,,,, coupled with known confounding effects of nonrandom selection of species and locations for introduction^,,,. Here, we test these alternative hypotheses using a global data set of historical bird introductions, employing a statistical …