Chapter 5 of Rambunctious Gardens by Emma Marris introduces a concept of assisted migration. This idea consists of moving species from one area to another in hopes that the species will adapt and grow in that new area. Assisted migration came to be because of the increasing climate changes due to the global warming situation. Animals, would strive to climb up the hills or mountains to find areas that were cooler but the problem arouse when the reached the apex of these mountains and were still suffering from the heat. There was nowhere else for them to go; so assisted migration came to be. The author gives an example of the American pika, which would climb the mountains to find cooler land. Eventually it reached the top and had nowhere else to go. After a few hours in 78F heat, the pika would die. Its best chance for survival was to find a new environment but it couldn’t do so without the humans assistance.
The concept of assisted migration sounds great and it really does work for species. The animals are willing to adapt to new environments when their only other option was to die. The problem with assisted migration is that most people would be inclined to help the resourceful species such as the pika, but who would be willing to help the millions of beetles that also need the help. Assisted migration for species such as the beetle would cost a lost of time, money and effort which may not be successful in the end. Scientists argue that putting different species that have never before interacted with each other could cause unprecedented circumstances that may cause an entire species to be wiped out.
Assisted migration has its positive and negative consequences. In my opinion, assisted migration has to be done because otherwise these species such as the pika have no chance of survival. Sure, there is the possibility that by transferring the species to an new environment make cause ecological disruption, but that is only a possibility while by humans not taking action, the death and eventual extinction of these species is a guarantee. Another factor, which I thought supports the use of assisted migration, is increasing the variation of species. If one species was exactly the same without differing biological factors, then it would make the chances of one catastrophic event much more likely to kill off the entire species. Through assisted migration, species can interact with other species and evolve to differing species with many variations of dna, making it a lot less likely that one event could kill off the entire species.
