Trends in Ecology & Evolution
OpinionTranslocation of species, climate change, and the end of trying to recreate past ecological communities
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.
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