Moving species threatened by climate change

[Karl]

Environmental Research Web – July 18, 2008

Many species are struggling to adapt to climate change as their preferred temperature conditions shift to higher latitudes or higher altitudes. In some cases, populations are unable to migrate because of natural barriers, such as large expanses of water, or manmade barriers like areas of cultivated land or cities. Also, the organisms may simply not be able to migrate fast enough to keep up with changing conditions.

Now, researchers from Australia, the US and the UK say that moving species that are threatened with extinction by climate change to new habitats could be an important conservation option. “This strategy flies in the face of conventional conservation approaches,” they write in a policy forum in Science. “The world is littered with examples where moving species beyond their current range into natural and agricultural landscapes has had negative impacts. Understandably, notions of deliberately moving species are regarded with suspicion.”

But the team believes that keeping species within their natural biogeographic region, as well as today’s more detailed scientific understanding, could help avoid some of these problems.“Moving species carries potential risk to other species, as well as benefits to the species being moved, so we have to be careful to weigh up the pros and cons on a case by case basis,” said Chris Thomas of the University of York, UK. “But not to act may represent a decision to allow a species to dwindle to extinction.”

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