Assisted Migration Response

In the chapter “Assisted Migration,” Emma Marris introduces the idea of helping species survive tough climate conditions by moving them manually. Her idea of assisted migration is based on the fact that since climate changes are brought about by human actions, such as the burning of fossil fuels, humans should be able to help certain organisms that cannot handle the changes in the climate and also cannot easily move to the right climate by themselves. She gives a good visualization for why assisted migration would be a helpful thing. “If you imagine a mountain as a perfect cone, you can easily visualize this effect. The higher you go up the cone, the less there is of it…you can’t make the mountain grow bigger, you could think about moving species to another mountaintop that is either higher or further north.” (77) This shows the reasoning behind assisted migration, which is that because certain organisms either cannot find their ideal habitat to live in by themselves or cannot move there by themselves, we should be able to move them so that they can live in the proper conditions. She argues that because humans are the reason for the climate changes taking place, we should be allowed to help organisms in need of help. There are a couple of benefits that I see in assisted migration. Unlike the idea of rewilding, assisted migration is done to help the organism rather than to create a pristine environment. It can help endangered species thrive by putting them back in the right type of environment, which they would not be able to get to naturally. Another benefit would be that we would be able to have greater biodiversity around the world since more species would survive. Climate change would not be a reason for the extinction of certain species anymore. However, along with all these positives from assisted migration are also negatives. By moving around organisms into other habitats, we are putting those habitats at risk since we do not know the effect those organisms will have there. This possibility of introducing invasive species into ecosystems is a big reason why assisted migration has opposition. I believe that just to possibly save a species, we should not put other species in danger. As Simberloff says, “there are just too many unknowns. I would want to know a lot more about pathogens and insects before I moved things…there is very little evidence that it is going to help.” (93) This shows that assisted migration can possibly be extremely harmful to some species since we do not know the effects that it would produce. I think that assisted migration is a better and more practical idea than rewilding, but there are still improvements that need to be made to the idea. We need to have more solid information about the effects of the species on the areas in which we migrate them to before we do it. I feel like it can be a possible method of helping species in the future, but for now, there are too many risks involved with assisted migration.