Moving Species to Save Them: Pros and Cons

July 17, 2008 -- With climate change increasingly threatening the survival of plants and animals, scientists say it may become necessary to move some species to save them. Dubbed assisted colonization or assisted migration, the idea is to decide how severe the threat is to various species, and if they need help to deal with it.

"When I first brought up this idea some 10 years ago in conservation meetings, most people were horrified," said Camille Parmesan, a biology professor at the University of Texas.

"But now, as the reality of global warming sinks in, and species are already becoming endangered and even going extinct because of climate change, I'm seeing a new willingness in the conservation community to at least talk about the possibility of helping out species by moving them around," she said. Parmesan discusses the idea in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

It's an idea that makes conservation biologists nervous.

There are plenty of risks in moving plants and animals to new locations. They may not survive, or they may become invasive, growing wildly without predators and crowding out natives of their new location.

And it's not possible to relocate every species that may need it, so how to decide who gets moved and who gets left behind to become extinct?

Stanford biologist Terry Root has been traveling the country urging her colleagues to come up with a plan for "triage" to decide which species should be saved from global warming and which can't. After other biologists complained about the word "triage," Root said she now calls it prioritizing which species should be saved.

"We've got to work on the ones we have a prayer of saving," Root said.