Opinion
Translocation of species, climate change, and the end of trying to recreate past ecological communities

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2011.02.006Get rights and content

Many of the species at greatest risk of extinction from anthropogenic climate change are narrow endemics that face insurmountable dispersal barriers. In this review, I argue that the only viable option to maintain populations of these species in the wild is to translocate them to other locations where the climate is suitable. Risks of extinction to native species in destination areas are small, provided that translocations take place within the same broad geographic region and that the destinations lack local endemics. Biological communities in these areas are in the process of receiving many hundreds of other immigrant species as a result of climate change; ensuring that some of the ‘new’ inhabitants are climate-endangered species could reduce the net rate of extinction.

Section snippets

Climate change and the threat to species

Species from a variety of taxonomic groups are already shifting their distributions towards higher latitudes and elevations, as the climate warms 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. However, some species disperse slowly, and many are not able to cross natural and human-created barriers [6]. Hence, distribution changes are already lagging behind the climate [7]. Species that are endemic to the summits of single mountain ranges, for example, face apparently insurmountable barriers to dispersal and a shrinking area

The end of trying to recreate the past

The argument that translocations will create ‘unnatural’ communities is not particularly relevant in the world today. A philosophy of conserving the composition of biological communities as they are, or restoring them to some specified (or imagined) historical state, sits uneasily with the reality of environmental and biological change. The loss of large, extinct herbivores and carnivores (megafauna) continues to affect the vegetation in remote and apparently natural areas 24, 25, 26. Regional

Translocations outside the ‘native ranges’ of species

Translocating threatened species beyond their known native range is one means available to manage change 19, 20, 21, 22. Guidelines on releases into the wild for the purposes of conservation have generally only condoned the release of a species into an area where it used to occur (i.e. re-introduction, not introduction); aiming to facilitate the recovery of a species within its native range and/or restoring the ecological community 40, 41. The native range of a species is ‘an area in which it

Relict distributions and new opportunities

Narrowly distributed species that could thrive elsewhere are among the most important potential targets for assisted colonisation. These species are thought to be at greatest risk from climate change because they have small distributions, often occupy climatic conditions that are projected to disappear within the current range of the species, and are surrounded by inhospitable conditions that they are unable to cross 6, 8, 10, 48. If suitable climatic conditions already exist or emerge

High and low risk translocations and destinations

The problem is where to move these species without causing problems. Most historically translocated species have remained rare within recipient regions, adding to regional species lists without always eliminating native species; hence increasing regional richness [59]. Nonetheless, approximately 40% of the historically documented species-level extinctions attributed to specific causes have been associated with invasive species, such as mammalian predators introduced to islands and predatory

Acknowledgements

I thank many colleagues for sharing their thoughts on conservation in the context of climate change, and three anonymous referees for their comments on the article.

References (70)

  • C. Rosenzweig

    Assessment of observed changes and responses in natural and managed systems

  • C.D. Thomas

    Climate, climate change and range boundaries

    Divers. Distr.

    (2010)
  • O. Broennimann

    Do geographic distribution, niche property and life form explain plants’ vulnerability to global change?

    Global Change Biol.

    (2006)
  • R. Menéndez

    Species richness changes lag behind climate change

    Proc. R. Soc. B

    (2006)
  • S.E. Williams

    Climate change in Australian tropical rainforests: an impending environmental catastrophe

    Proc. R. Soc. B

    (2003)
  • R. Ohlemüller

    The coincidence of climatic and species rarity: high risk to small-range species from climate change

    Biol. Lett.

    (2008)
  • I.-C. Chen

    Asymmetric boundary shifts of tropical montane Lepidoptera over four decades of climate warming

    Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr.

    (2011)
  • C.D. Thomas

    Extinction risk from climate change

    Nature

    (2004)
  • J.R. Malcolm

    Global warming and extinctions of endemic species from biodiversity hotspots

    Conserv. Biol.

    (2006)
  • W. Jetz

    Projected impacts of climate and land-use change on the global diversity of birds

    PLoS Biol.

    (2007)
  • A. Fischlin

    Ecosystems, their properties goods and services

  • K.E. Carpenter

    One-third of reef-building corals face elevated extinction risk from climate change and local impacts

    Science

    (2008)
  • C.H. Sekercioglu

    Climate change, elevational range shifts, and bird extinctions

    Conserv. Biol.

    (2008)
  • J.A. Hodgson

    Climate change, connectivity and conservation decision making: back to basics

    J. Appl. Ecol.

    (2009)
  • M.L. Hunter

    Climate change and moving species: furthering the debate on assisted colonization

    Conserv. Biol.

    (2007)
  • J.S. McLachlan

    A framework for debate of assisted migration in an era of climate change

    Conserv. Biol.

    (2007)
  • O. Hoegh-Guldberg

    Assisted colonization and rapid climate change

    Science

    (2008)
  • P.J. Seddon

    From reintroduction to assisted colonization: moving along the conservation translocation spectrum

    Restor. Ecol.

    (2010)
  • D.H. Janzen et al.

    Neotropical anachronisms: the fruits the Gomphotheres ate

    Science

    (1982)
  • J. Donlan

    Re-wilding North America

    Nature

    (2005)
  • C.J. Donlan

    Pleistocene rewilding: an optimistic agenda for twenty-first century conservation

    Am. Nat.

    (2006)
  • J.A. Pounds

    Biological response to climate change on a tropical mountain

    Nature

    (1999)
  • I.C. Chen

    Elevation increases in moth assemblages over 42 years on a tropical mountain

    Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

    (2009)
  • O. Hoegh-Guldberg

    Coral reefs under rapid climate change and ocean acidification

    Science

    (2007)
  • J.A. Pounds

    Widespread amphibian extinctions from epidemic disease driven by global warming

    Nature

    (2006)
  • Cited by (274)

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text