At this point in time, one of the issues that plague conservationists is global warming. As a result of global warming, earth’s climate temperatures are warmer than usual. While humans don’t find an issue with this, other species on planet earth could possibly become extinct because of it. For example, Chapter five in Emma Marris’ Rambunctious Garden, opens with the example of the “American pika…which curl up and die after a few hours in 78-degree Fahrenheit heat (73). To avoid the rising temperatures the pika move to higher altitudes, but if they move to lower altitudes they risk death. To help them with their transition conservationists recommend the idea of assisted migration.
Assisted migration is the process where humans take species and move them to new locations. The purpose of doing this is help animals like the American Pika that have limited options in where they could live or transition to. Once humans move the species and find a suitable place for them the belief is that the animals will be able to move slightly more freely and be able to survive and cope with the surrounding issues of global warming.
Similar to rewilding, assisted migration involves the relocation of species, which means assisted migration shares some of the issue as rewilding. By introducing new species into an ecosystem, the future of the environment cannot be fully determined. There could be variable non accounted for, which could end up altering the new location the species has been moved to. “Simberloff said there are just too many unknowns. ‘I would want to know a lot more about pathogens and insects before [he] moved things…there is very little evidence that it is going to help” (93). Dov Sax states “the thought of planting a couple of hectares of trees far to the north where people currently harvest-that sounds a little scary to me” (93). With his apprehension to plant trees, one could assume that he would be completely against moving animal species around at this time.
Another issue with assisted migration is that it seems like a short-term resolution. Since assisted migration doesn’t seek to remedy the issue of global warming temperatures will continue to increase over time, which could cause the temperature of the new ecosystem to be unfavorable to the new species and possibly the species already living there. With this predicament, the once relocated species will have to be moved once again and the processes that ecologists went through in their initial movement will have to be repeated.
The continuous movement of species could result in the need of high funds. As a result, with the already low funding in conservation movements, “the benefits of translocation [must] outweigh the biological and socioeconomic costs and constraints” for assisted migration to be a plausible treatment. “Even assisted migration friendly ecologists are worried about going too fast” (93). Even though assisted migration has good intentions behind it, it might not be a plausible solution to the issues we are currently facing with global climate change.
