For nearly 100 years, conservationists have focused preservation efforts on maintaining species' historical ranges and reintroducing captive-bred species to boost dwindling populations. Now, some scientists are experimenting with a new approach.
"What's changed over the years is we introduce [species] into areas where they have never been before," said Philip Seddon an associate zoology professor at Otago University in New Zealand. "It's acknowledging that there are no pristine habitats, it's not feasible to have them locked away from people."
The approach is called conservation translocation. Scientists move endangered species that are unable to shift their habitats on their own into new locations. That can mean moving species into areas closer to humans. Translocation is also used to correct an ecological void created by the extinction of another species, said Seddon, the lead author of a paper on translocation published in the journal Science last month.
As temperatures and sea levels rise, endangered species are especially vulnerable to losing habitat. An estimated 20 to 30 percent of the world's species will be at risk for extinction if global temperatures rise 2 to 3 degrees Celsius above preindustrialized levels in the next century, according to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Over the last six years, interest in translocating endangered plant and animal species into new habitats has exploded. More than 75 percent of 195 scientific articles on the subject were published after 2008, according to a study published last year in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. The co-author of the study, Mark Schwartz, attributed the interest to the recent compelling evidence that climate change is causing species extinction.
Will It Be Extinction or 'Translocation' as Impacts of Climate Change Increase?
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