Should We Move Animals Hurt By Climate Change?
Assisted colonization can have ugly side effects, a la Battlestar Galactica. Image by Tom (Todas con licencia CC, Atribución) via Flickr
Scientists perhaps viewing climate change as an inevitably, are drawing up plans to move endangered animal populations from their home turf to areas expected to become more hospitable to the critters.
Altruistic? To be sure. Practical? Perhaps for a few, narrow niches. Dangerous? Very.
In the journal Conservation Letters, University of Notre Dame researchers have proposed “assisted colonization” as one way of saving species doomed by climate change.
Sinister as it sounds, assisted colonization is part of the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Still, it’s difficult to hear the phrase and not think of all the bio chaos created by intentional and accidental species introductions. Or, for that matter, history’s many human forced marches resettlements.
Adding a species is the same as extinction in at least one respect: What seems like a tidy, contained event will have uncountable effects and side effects.
One side effect of assisted colonization will be political. If scientists can move an endangered mayfly to a better habitat, commercial interests no doubt will want to use the same logic and policy to move a frog from land coveted by developers, for example.
Saving every species is a lofty goal, while saving every species that can be saved practically is more realistic. In defining practicality, we need to make sure we aren’t masking our guilt with actions that create more chaos.
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[...] Should We Move Animals Hurt By Climate Change? – Jim Nash … [...]
Mr. Nash,
I am far more concerned about the animals that are already colonizing themselves into new territory. There a number of disease bearing insects that are moving north, bringing their diseases with them. The Mountain Pine Beetle is destroying forests in Colorado because raising temperatures are allowing them survive at higher altitudes than they have in the past. It looks like it every species for themselves.
Brings to my mind the drawbacks of tampering with nature to bring back dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. Playing God is playing God. Perhaps we should relocate developers, miners, and forresters who destroy the environment…