Conservationist Camille Parmesan, a UT associate professor of integrative biology, has suggested a controversial method to help species threatened by the effects of global warming.
In a July 18 article, Parmesan and six other members of an international research team argue that traditional conservation techniques are insufficient in the face of rising temperatures and other global warming effects.
Parmesan, who observes the impact of climate change on butterflies and other species, suggests implementing "human-assisted colonization," a controversial conservation technique, which relocates endangered species from their traditional habitats to save them from extinction. The technique helps them escape environmental stressors, such as unusually high temperatures and loss of habitat.
Because of global warming, isolated species may no longer be adapted to their environment and cannot migrate to areas less affected by the increase in temperature, Parmesan said. She said those animals would be the best qualified to undergo "assisted colonization."
The method is controversial because it has had adverse affects when employed in the past, Parmesan said, referring to the introduction of rabbits to Australia in 1788. The rabbits quickly multiplied and crowded the native populations because of the lack of predators.
"The conservation community has traditionally strayed from this tactic because they are against invasive species that you get when moving species across continents," Parmesan said.
The research team, however, is not advocating relocating entire populations across continents but instead focusing on more modest relocations.
"You can do a lot by moving a species 500 miles," Parmesan said.
For a species to qualify for relocation, its impact on the environment must be known, and it must be easy to relocate, have a high likelihood of extinction within its traditional habitat and be relatively inexpensive to relocate, she said.
The Quino checkerspot butterfly and the American Pika are the only two species that fit that description, Parmesan said.
The survival of endangered species depends directly upon how society interprets the importance of the animal in question because researchers would take into consideration a species' value to society when deciding where to relocate them, Parmesan said.
"That decision is more going to be based on society's aesthetic - which species society wants to save," she said. "We know we are going to have a lot of extinctions."
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, the study's lead author and professor at the University of Queensland in Queensland, Australia, could not be reached for comment by press time.
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