moving

Moving Endangered Species | Earth Wise

December 5, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

People have intentionally or accidentally introduced numerous invasive species to habitats around the world. At the same time, the planet’s wildlife is in a steep decline. A recent study estimated that the populations of over 5,000 vertebrate species have declined by an average of nearly 70% since 1970. A United Nations report warns that human activity has threatened as many as a million species with extinction.

With all of this as a background, there is climate change that is altering the habitats of the world’s species – warming lakes and oceans, turning forests into grasslands, tundra into woodland, and melting glaciers. In response to these changes, living things are rearranging themselves, migrating to more hospitable locations. But many species are just not capable of finding more suitable habitats on their own.

Conservationists are now increasingly considering the use of assisted migration. In some cases, when a species’ critical habitat has been irreversibly altered or destroyed, agencies are establishing experimental populations outside of the species’ historical range. Such actions are often deemed extreme but may be increasingly necessary.

However, clear-cut cases are relatively rare. More likely, it is a more difficult judgement call as to whether assisted migration is a good idea or is possibly a threat to the ecosystem of the species’ new location. The relative dearth of assisted migration experiments is less likely a result of legal barriers than it is a lack of scientific and societal consensus on the practice. Scientists are now trying to develop risk-analysis frameworks that various agencies can use in considering potential assisted migration experiments.

**********

Web Links

Last Resort: Moving Endangered Species in Order to Save Them

Photo, posted March 18, 2010, courtesy of Jean via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Marine Life Moving The Wrong Way | Earth Wise

October 26, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

As the oceans have warmed in recent decades, various marine species ranging from whales to corals have begun to shift poleward in search of cooler waters. But a new study, reported in the journal Nature Climate Change, found that many sedentary marine species – including snails, worms, and mussels – are actually being transported in the wrong direction.

What is happening is that bottom-dwelling species – also known as benthic species – in the northwest Atlantic Ocean are spawning earlier in the year because of the warmer water temperatures. But earlier in the year is when ocean currents travel southward. As a result, the larvae of these animals are being carried into warmer waters rather than cooler ones, threatening their survival and shrinking their ranges. These larvae grow into adults in these warmer regions and are basically trapped there. This creates a feedback loop where the situation for the species gets worse and worse. Species like common sand dollars and the economically important blue mussel have had a 30 to 50% contraction of their ranges.

The result is that a number of bottom-dwelling species that previously were quite abundant have entirely disappeared from the outer shelf.

The researchers at Rutgers University likened this “wrong-way migration” of bottom-dwelling marine life to so-called elevator-to-extinction events that have been taking place in mountainous regions. This is where species such as birds and butterflies move to higher and higher elevations to escape rising temperatures until there is nowhere else for them to go.

The essential fact that this research reveals is that species don’t necessarily move to places where the climate is congenial for them. They may unfortunately end up migrating to even worse conditions.

**********

Web Links

As Oceans Warm, Some Species Are Moving in the Wrong Direction

Photo, posted June 10, 2016, courtesy of James_Seattle via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Australia On The Run

November 9, 2016 By WAMC WEB

We’ve all come to take for granted the ability of GPS systems to help us find our way around our cities, the countryside and, for that matter, the world in general. Software interacting with Global Positioning Satellites allows us to pinpoint our location on the Earth with remarkable accuracy. At least, as long as places on Earth stay put. But the problem is that they actually don’t.

[Read more…] about Australia On The Run