CANBERRA, Australia, Aug. 10 (UPI) -- Relocating species threatened by climate change is a radical strategy to maintain biodiversity and must be considered carefully, Australian researchers say.
Scientists at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, along with colleagues at the University of Queensland and United States Geological Survey, have come up with what they call a pragmatic decision framework for determining when, if ever, to move species in the face of climate change, a CSIRO release said Wednesday.
"As our climate changes more rapidly than species can adapt or disperse, natural resource managers increasingly want to know what adaptation options are available to help them conserve biodiversity," CSIRO researcher Eve McDonald-Madden said.
Managed relocation, also known as assisted colonization, involves moving plants or animals from an area becoming untenable because of climate change to areas where climatic conditions are more suitable, but in which the species have not occurred previously.
"The decision-making framework we have developed shows that the best timing for moving species depends on many factors such as the size of the population, the expected losses in the population through relocation, and the expected numbers that the new location could be expected to support," CSIRO's Tara Martin said. "Managed relocation is not a quick fix. It will be used in some specific circumstances for species that we really care about, but it will not be a savior for all biodiversity in the face of climate change.
"Without relocating species we are destined to lose some of our most important and iconic wildlife, but at the end of the day we also need viable ecosystems into which we can move species," she said.
