- It’s the experimental nature of assisted migration that makes some scientists wary about the risks involved. In 2009, the ecologists Anthony Ricciardi and David Simberloff published an op-ed contending that the strategy was “likely to produce myriad unintended and unpredictable consequences” and could profoundly interrupt the established ecosystems and food webs where the new trees are planted. Assisted migration, they said, was tantamount to “ecological gambling”.
Assisted migration can also be a hard sell for the public, especially in communities that have been warned for years about the dangers of non-native plants and invasive species. Guldin reiterates that ASCC’s introductions are done in “very small steps”, and Landau argues that trees like longleaf pine require such specific management –namely, regular burns of the surrounding area that eliminate competing vegetation, enrich the soil, and kill harmful insects – and are so slow-growing that they’re “highly unlikely to escape” the plots where they are grown.
But this management isn’t cheap, and that’s another common criticism of assisted migration. Getting trees to grow outside of their normal habitat is labor-intensive work, and no amount of time or money can guarantee the trees will thrive in their new environment; half of the longleaf pine seedlings at the Plum Creek Preserve have died despite the best efforts of TNC staff.
I've been finding lately, the conversations about populations and ranges and climate change, really interesting. To the point where I have informed opinions, but I would caution people to take them with a grain of salt because I'm not a scientist, I just listen to scientists speak, and boy howdy, scientists like to disagree sometimes. One of the things that I'm worried about, is that with climate change, life that is used to warmer areas have two main options. Move to higher altitudes, or move closer to the poles. On the face of it, that doesn't seem to be too big of an issue, but especially in the northern hemisphere that could become an issue where biodiversity is involved. When you're closer to the tropics, there's a lot more variety of pretty much everything. If you want to run into the chance or discovering a previously undescribed species, someplace like Ecuador or Madagascar is gonna offer you a better chance than say, Ontario. Plants and animals especially, we pretty much have a good idea of what's in Ontario just because there isn't as many species. When animals that are used to living further south move further north, what's gonna happen to the residences further north? What's gonna guarantee that the new residences are gonna be able to establish stable populations, thrive? The will to live, pretty much, maybe human intervention to. One of the things that irks me about iNaturalist is that a lot of people on there depend way too much on range maps to make a decision on what to identify as a species. For example, Carolina Chickadees and Black Cap Chickadees look very similar, can sound similar, and where their populations overlap there's issues of coloration and songs blending into each other. Someone sees a picture of a chickadee on there, without the distinguishing feathers to show without a doubt what kind of bird it is, and they say "Carolina Chickadee cause range" and leave it at that. Sometimes it comes down to common sense, for example if you see what you think is a Five Striped Skink in the hills of Appalachia, you can be pretty certain you're wrong because those are found in Asia and what you're looking at is more likely a Common Five Lined Skink or a Broadhead Skink. But overall, I think relying solely on range maps to make a decision on close calls is a philosophical problem. Animals move, plants spread, hitch hiking and getting lost in storms and human introductions of new species are all common occurrences. Interlopers aren't rare, just rarely spotted. Range maps aren't static, in fact, they're very dynamic. I have some bird books and other field guides from the '60s and '90s and if you compare their range maps to today's, you're gonna see a ton of shifting in borders, sometimes startling growth and sadly sometimes startling contractions. Climate change is a cause, creation and destruction of habitat is a cause, animals will to migrate is a cause. I mean, just look at Coyotes and White Tailed Deer. Due to massive loss of deep woods, their populations have completely spilled out across the United States over the past century. Where wolves and elk and moose have lost out, coyotes and white tails have won. I think the other thing that gets me thinking is that we're always taught "invasive species = bad!" and I can see the argument for that. Look at Lesser Celandine, or look at Asian Carp or look at Mussels in the Great Lakes. Everyone knows about these, because their effects on the ecology around them are dramatic. But a lot of introduced species, like The Western Honey Bee or Asian Lady Beetle or House Sparrows or Italian Wall Lizard are often viewed as relatively innocuous if not an outright curiosity to kind of be cheered on. The conversation on invasive species is getting kind of dicey right now and if someone wants more details I can try to find some stories from both sides to show what's going on. What it boils down to though is on one side people will say "life that already lives here has adapted to live here and interact with other forms of life in this area, a fragile balance has been achieved and we need to do what we can to maintain it" and on the other side people are saying "the fragile balance won't last cause climate change, any living thing that can thrive in an area without causing harm should be left alone cause there's not guarantee that local species are gonna make it." I see both points. I agree with both points. I disagree with both points. I worry deeply. There's a crack in the foundation of our planet and more and more it's looking more like a horizontal crack than a vertical one and I don't think anyone really knows what to do with it.
The point about invasive species is an interesting one, I hadn't really thought of it before as resistance to natural ecological drift. It's probably really important that we collectively figure out if, and to what extent we should intervene with changing ecosystems. It's not really fit to assume that there will be a gentle rearrangement of species and habitats as climate changes. With the current rapid change in temperature and CO2, we're aligned more with mass extinction rather than mass adaptation. Intervention is going to be bold though. There was the Iron Hypothesis: "Give me a half a tanker of iron and I'll give you the next ice age". I'd be lying if I said I weren't a little curious to see how a long-term iron seeding would change things. Ultimately, I think we will have to think about some kind of technological way of sequestering carbon.
There's interesting talks about some work taking place in Iceland right now, believe it or not. I don't know enough to know if it's hype or not. Personally, I think the whole "We can fix things with technology!" approach isn't a good one, on the grounds that there's no guarantee we can do it, there's no guarantee that we won't do more harm than good, and it creates a mentality of being able to kick the can down the road and making the solution "science's responsibility to do something eventually" instead of "humanity's responsibility to do something yesterday." But at the same time, we're past a tipping point and I also don't think things like tree planting, ocean cleanup, reducing carbon footprints, etc. is good enough anymore. Like I said. There's a crack in the foundation and it's looking more and more horizontal to me.Ultimately, I think we will have to think about some kind of technological way of sequestering carbon.
From the article and To your question . . . The entire field of biology? No. However, people have all sorts of concerns in issues that are related to biology and there are intense conversations on things such as antibiotics, commercial farming, gene editing, cloning, geological manipulation, population manipulation, on and on it can go. I mean, there's literally a subfield of ethics devoted to these conversations. And lastly, there are tons of conversations around the exact topic of the original article. Wikipedia has a nice primer to jump off of if you're curious.No one quoted in the article said that, and there was plenty of opportunity to quote someone who did if such a person could be found. This journalist is just trying to create a controversy where none exists.
"Landau says that, on Facebook, TNC’s longleaf project has been accused of “playing the hand of God”. She dismisses the criticism. “There’s so little nature left that we haven’t already had a heavy hand in,” she says."
"It’s the experimental nature of assisted migration that makes some scientists wary about the risks involved. In 2009, the ecologists Anthony Ricciardi and David Simberloff published an op-ed contending that the strategy was “likely to produce myriad unintended and unpredictable consequences” and could profoundly interrupt the established ecosystems and food webs where the new trees are planted. Assisted migration, they said, was tantamount to “ecological gambling”."
Hey, is the entire field of biology just "playing God?" Does anyone other than dumb science journalists or young earth creationists ever think that?
I think the term "Playing God" used to hold more weight, because it was encapsulating a big, weighty, concept into two words. Unfortunately, it's used to death to where it's kind of lost its meaning, like if you say the word "calculator" over and over and over and suddenly it doesn't sound like an english word even though you know what it means. Population management concepts are often really interesting arguments to read about and assisted colonization in particular seems to be a very urgent topic, which just adds to the interest. Most people, when first asked, often think they don't have any opinion on the subject. But once you get them talking about things such as hunting and fishing, wildlife conflicts with livestock, wildlife conflicts with humans in urban and suburban settings, etc., they often realize they have some strong opinions on the matter and it doesn't take long to really start getting philosophical about humans, nature, control, lack of it, responsibility, lack of it, the whole nine yards.
For an extra read . . . Scientists put forward plan to create universal species list: Single classification system could end centuries of disagreement and improve global efforts to tackle biodiversity loss For example, scientific evidence indicates the African elephant could be two species – the forest elephant and the savanna elephant. Yet major conservation organisations such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) only acknowledge one. “The general public are identifying with these entities they call species and they think they’re real biological, natural units rather than being a slice in time that is a human construct,” said the lead author Stephen Garnett, a professor of conservation and sustainable livelihoods at Charles Darwin University in Australia. A widely used definition of a species centres on whether a group of living things can exchange DNA by creating viable offspring. But in several cases, the lines between species are blurred, causing disagreement between taxonomists – the scientists who discover, name and classify species. New techniques, including genomic analysis and micro CT scans, have also prompted scientists to discover that organisms previously thought to be one species may, in fact, be several, such as south-east Asian leaf monkeys, giraffes and walking sharks. “For probably 90% of the species, there are natural units, they don’t interbreed and they’re well behaved. But there’s 10% that are busy evolving and we have to make this decision about what is the species and is not,” said Garnett. “The public is expecting science to be able to do that. And science hasn’t got a system for doing it reliably.”With at least 26 competing concepts, biologists have never reached agreement over what constitutes a species, the most basic classification of an organism. As a result, conservation organisations, national governments and scientists often use separate lists of mammals, fungi and other organisms with differing taxonomic descriptions.