In a previous post I speculated about the likely effects of climate change on South Africa’s Cape Floristic Region, one of the most biodiverse floral kingdoms on the planet, and the Kruger National Park. In Kruger Park’s case I wondered what would happen if vegetation species migrated east into Mozambique, to be followed by big game. As national park and country borders are fixed in space and often do not protect whole ecosystems, if ecosystems that support the charismatic mega-fauna that attract the tourist had to move into Mozambique’s Limpopo National Park, what would the effects on tourism revenue and infrastructure in Kruger be? It was a semi-serious thought experiment, but now comes chilling news that scientists are preparing to assist species to migrate.
Prof Dave Richardson of the Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology at Stellenbosch University is the lead author of a ground-breaking paper that describes a tool to help policy-makers and scientists employ “managed relocation” to move species into “more accommodating habitat” where they are currently absent.
“We hope that the tool will help to reduce the polarity that has emerged in the debate on whether managed relocation should be added to the conservationist’s toolbox,” says Prof Richardson.
“Scientists are, for the first time, objectively evaluating ways to help species cope with rapidly changing climate and other environmental threats by implementing strategies that were considered too radical for serious consideration as recently as five or ten years ago,” explains Prof Richardson, one of the world’s leading minds on matters pertaining to invasive species.
“Our decision-making tool is ground-breaking because managed relocation has traditionally been categorically eschewed by scientists for fear that relocated species would harm receiving habitats by reproducing wildly out of control, causing extinctions of local species,” says Prof Richardson, who cites the way in which invasive alien trees have reduced water production from mountain catchments in the Western Cape as an example of the damage that translocation can do.
Now that is radical. It seems climate change is so rapid, that a more than 2 degrees C average global temperature increase this century is inevitable, that we are going to intervene radically in ecosystem functioning in order to help our fellow species survive. I wonder where we can relocate the polar bears to?
Ralph Pina is an ecoAfrica.com founder
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