Assisted migration is a bit similar rewilding. In rewilding, species are moved to another environment to rebuild the nature that once used to be there. In assisted migration, organisms are moved to another area to ensure they survive and do not become extinct from climate change. The importance of rewilding is to save the environment, whereas the importance of assisted migration is to rescue species from extinction. To say one method is better than the other is difficult, as both methods have different goals. However, the two methods do aim to stop the ecosystem from deteriorating any further. Also, the two methods have similar concerns. For both methods, scientists worry that by moving species to a new area, they will turn into invasive species. If organisms turned into invasive species, then the method at hand would be too risky to implement as it puts the ecosystem in danger of becoming more out of balance. A concern raised in assisted migration, which may apply to rewilding, is that if species are moved to another environment, the new area may not have the necessities -“specific soil microbes or microclimatic conditions”- for the organisms to sruvive. Although research is done on the animals, there are so many variables out there that scientists can only do so much to identify what specific animals need to survive in a new environment.
According to research there are two types of migration. One type is migration towards peaks of mountains. Certain species can only handle certain temperatures, such as the American pika. This animal cannot survive in high temperatures, so as climate changes lean towards the heat the American pika will have to move up the mountain where it is cooler. Increasing heat from climate change means that animals from the bottom of the mountain will have to move up to live in comfort and survive. The more species climb up to the apex of the mountain, the less space there will be. Thus, there is more competition in the mountain, which would lead to extinction for some animals. To protect species from going extinct, some ecologists consider assisted migration because of the second type of migration: pole-wards migration. Pole-ward migration is the action of organisms to move towards the northern poles due to climate change. For example, beech trees are normally from the southern end of Canada to northern Florida; however, beech trees are now moving north into Canada because of the cool temperatures fit for beech trees. An ecologist, Parmesan, estimates that “the average species’s range…moves 3.8 miles towards the pole every decade.” Pole-ward migration is not as severe as mountain migration because there is a higher chance of extinction for mountain species due to mountain migration. Even if organisms move closer to the poles, mountain organisms are unable to move away from the mountains. For example, the American pika can only move up the mountain since it cannot survive in high temperatures and the temperature at the bottom of the mountain is too high for it to survive. Thus, it is trapped to stay on the mountain and climb up unless someone were help it migrate. Assisted migration does not seem like a bad idea as a method to prevent species from going extinct, even though there are chances of the species to go extinct in a new area or for the species to turn invasive.
