Playing God with Species
I wasn't quite sure what to think when I read an article from the New York Times on something called assisted migration. Conservation biologists are discussing moving species from one location to another to prevent them becoming extinct due to stresses from global warming.
Obviously, people have moved species before, repopulating parts of the West with wolves, for instance. The difference in my mind is that in that circumstance, we were returning a species to an area where it had lived and would have continued to live had humans not wiped it out. Moving a species to prevent the possibility that it would not be able to adapt to change and would become extinct without human intervention? I am not aware that we have done that before. We have moved species to help control pests, often with disastrous results.
The potential problems this idea raises are numerous - first, what species do you move? Where do you move them? How do you know what impact the species will have on its new home? Will the species have what it needs to thrive in its new location? Will it push out or stress species which are indigenous to the new location? Invasive species have caused great harm around the world, zebra mussels, for example, have damaged the Great Lakes' ecosystem.
Conservation biologists aren't planning on moving species soon, but the issue is open for debate. I hope wise decisions are made.
Comments (5)
I don't know about the whole idea of playing God. However, if we look way into our history books, animals have been moved in order to prevent them from being wiped out. I'm referencing Noah and the great flood. He was instructed to take two of every kind. So maybe instead of moving an entire species to "protect" them we could just move two of each species in order to save the species. We would only be repeating what we did for the flood.
Posted by Julie | January 25, 2007 1:19 PM
I think that global warming is the reson behind our crazy weather for the last year or so.
Posted by Ron Jol | January 25, 2007 2:24 PM
This is a bit unrelated to this entry, but I find it fascinating that global warming "skeptics" like to talk about how inaccurate climate models are, yet they flaunt economic "models" of how our economy will suffer and lose hundreds of trillions of dollars if we reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Economic modeling has been shown to be amongst the least accurate types of models...yet the skeptics have no problem referencing these models, while attempting to depict climate modeling as unreliable.
Yet another classic case of people cherry picking statistics to fit their argument.
Posted by Mark | January 25, 2007 2:48 PM
We had better build a super ark because if the gulf sea current shuts down again, we will see an even bigger super storm. Yes, it is without a doubt warmer when the artic winds aren't blowing, but many species think it's spring and are mating.
The super storm that last month ran through the US and Northern Europe was just a taste of what's to come. Were can species be protected if entire continents are subjected to extreme conditions. A man-made protected shelter holding many specimens of species to keep them alive is the answer. When the weather cycle passes for good, they can be released to their original home. But this weather cycle may last for many, many years.
Posted by demiseofman | January 25, 2007 4:00 PM
Dear Laura:
Ugh! This is a glaring example of how spurious and damaging the pseudo-science of global warming has been upon the discipline of climatology. Unfortunately, even biologists are now getting sucked into the frenzy started by atmospheric scientists poorly trained in ecology and organismal physiology. Never satisfied, academic scientists want more money to study and 'fix' speculative problems associated with global warming. Who needs to catch a drama at a local playhouse. The specter of global warming has become first-rate theater of the absurd. Thanks for bringing this spectacle to our attention.
I wonder how many tons of hydrocarbons junketing scientists at Penn State and other American universities consume traveling to the tropics to study climatology and biology? The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Undoubtedly, they can reduce their carbon SUV tracks by studying ecosystems on our side of the fence closer to home.
Hayes Galitski
Claremont, CA
Posted by Hayes Galitski | January 26, 2007 2:24 PM