Should We Move Creatures Threatened by Climate Change?

This might sound like a good Samaritan no-brainer, the critter equivalent of helping an old lady cross the street. Yet relocating animals would be a major departure from the last half-century of conservation practice in the United States. The 1964 Wilderness Act was based on the idea that the way to preserve biodiversity is to set aside tracts of land, step aside, and let nature take its course. That approach is insufficient in light of climate change, says Alex Camacho, a University of California-Irvine law professor studying assisted migration. "Our conservation laws are based on static ideas about nature," he says, "not landscapes that are rapidly changing because of something humans did." Research on assisted migration is so new that there isn't yet evidence of whether it works. But clearly it would be complicated and expensive. In order to move mammals, you'd have to trap and transport enough individuals to start a new population. In the case of the Karners, the process would involve breeding the butterflies in a lab and carefully moving them elsewhere—then planting plenty of purple lupine, the larvae's sole food source. Transplanting an ecosystem can be risky, as history shows. In the late 1800s, the USDA famously encouraged farmers to use kudzu, a vine imported from Japan, to control soil erosion. Farmers and gardeners have cursed the prolific weed ever since. Hellmann doesn't believe that relocating species threatened by climate change is a panacea. "It's just not realistic to think you're going to be able to move all the creepy-crawlies that no one cares about," she says. But for even a few plants or animals, "it could be huge."...more