Discuss: Taking Wildness in Hand: Rescuing Species

Thank you Orion for bringing this topic to the discussion table with a well-rounded mix of viewpoints.
 
While slaving away through my early 20’s and beginning conservation career through weedeating reed canarygrass, hacking blackberries,followed by saving the world through watershed restoration and planting trees, I have often come to this question of how all of this will ecologically play out ecologically under longterm climate change. 

In ecological restoration and conservation, we think and plan our projects in long time spans - ie. 20, 50, 100 years out, and well into perpetuitiy. But what about this in the shadow of looming climate change? Are our efforts justified? Just as the author questions the effect and risks of assisted migration, I also wonder how our effort today will be sustained and reflected by the planet’s health and climate in only 50 years.  (I almost wrote “vast amount of effort” until I realized that my several years of AmeriCorps and other low-paying field work and grant writing experience was quite personally biased and not reflective of national and global efforts).

It is clear that our planet is out of balance.  Is meddling and trying to engineer our planet’s nature going to restore that balance or just throw it off kilter even moreso. I am relatively quite young, but I witness too many examples of where doing “the right thing” in the past has gone wrong, and this is especially in regards to transplanting species that have now become invasive.  I don’t intend to offend any ecologists or planners with this statement, but how are we scientifically going to assure that we don’t contribute to this invasion of weeds through “engineered” efforts such as assisted migration, especially as those other species in, lets say the further north range, also become in peril with climate change and have to compete with our newly transplanted species.  Are we going to transplant all species and ecosystems northward or just those currently in peril?  How do we know how these species will respond to moving north? Is just re-locating slightly north enough to ensure survival and proliferation of these species? Then, how soon will that new habitat’s climate change, resulting in the same species in trouble again?  I only hope is that we conduct more credible research than the Food and Drug Administration with its unofficial philosophy of innocent until proven guilty for drugs. 

I am personally and professionally dedicated to the conservation and preservation of species, but I sadly lose hope in all of this effort in the shadow of global climate change.  Climate change is obviously a huge and complex issue.  I wish we could just ask the president to push a button and say “stop” (well not this administration!) So, this obviously is not practical.  But, we do have a few simplified options to save our earth’s species: 1. stop/slow down climate change;  2. mitigate for climate change (ie. assisted migration, seedbanking, etc); or a combination of both. I wish I had the answers to not only conserving our species, but even moreso, to restoring the balance of this planet and humankind.  Is climate change a symptom of our earth out of balance that we can put a bandaid on or is it a reflection that our planet is out of balance? 

Is it realistic to engineer our way into conserving what we have today, or to strive for a new balance in the future and let mother nature sort out who’s in and out?  Do we patch bandaids all over the earth and treat these symptoms of imbalance individually one by one, like our average american improving health by taking cholesterol reducing drugs, purchasing bigger belts, drinking diet pop, and eating nonfat soy cheese; or do we slow down, plant a garden, eating fresh vegetables, exercising our muscles and brains, while savoring our palate.  The effective approach for healing our planet, just as in healing our planet earth has to be towards holistically restoring balance.

I have no idea how we accomplish this, but I’d love to hear your comments and replies. Also I do love all earth’s species, with the minor exception of ticks. Thank you for listening to my rant. ~ J.

This is Connie Barlow, the originator of Torreya Guardians mentioned in the article.  I have added hotlinks to this Orion article from our http://www.TorreyaGuardians.org website, and to wikipedia entries on “assisted migration”, “Torreya” and “Torreya taxifolia”.  The author, Michelle Nijhuis, did a superb job of giving the human side of the controversy.

Orion readers who’d like to keep up on Torreya Guardians work and action should visit our website.  There you will see that a rewilding action to assist the migration of 31 Torreya taxifolia seedlings will take place on private forested land in western North Carolina (near Highlands) on July 30 and 31.

Also, as webmaster of the site, I try to keep current a page devoted to listing all the news articles on assisted migration and other forms of rewilding.  Go to http://www.torreyaguardians.org/assisted-migration.html

Together for Torreya,
Connie Barlow

Very interesting article and important ideas. I’ve been thinking along the same lines here in the foothills of the White Mountain National Forest (Maine/NH). As climate change progresses, and it seems to be happening much faster than “they” and I though possible even a short five years ago, I’ve been wondering about our own forests here in northern New England. We are slated to eventually lose our maples and many pine and fir species and who knows what else. I’ve been thinking it might be a good thing to begin planting tree species that might survive in a warmer climate while being able to also survive the current colder (though not as cold as the past, we’re now considered zone 4 and often 5 and we used to be zone 3) winters. I can’t imagine our beautiful forests replete with dead and dying trees and it will take some time for naturally migrating species to grow to the maturity of our current trees. I can understand the concerns, and I share them given the current invasion of species like purple loosestrife in my neck of the woods. However, nothing like human caused climate change has ever happened before, and dramatic efforts may sometimes be required not only to save species but to help ecosystems that can no longer rely on natural migration, selection, and balance due to roads, development, and other human barriers to what nature would do on her own.

Thank you for the balanced, well-written article.

I live in China now where the first Torreya tree I came across was the Chinese torreya (Torreya grandis). It produces an edible nut (I assume the ‘Stinking Cedar’, or Florida torreya, does not produce an edible nut?). Literally translated as ‘Fragrant Torreya’, the nut is delicious and is a common snack in southern China and especially at festivals.

Regarding the Florida Torreya, I was wondering if there is any prior documentation of the tree actually being harmful to other species of plant-life.

Also, is the current problem only climate? Was there possibly an intoduction into the Apalachicola River area of an insect/weed that has caused the fungus suite? I would love to know more about the theories of the tree’s problems.

Finally, does anyone know if there is any documentation of the Florida Torreya tree being used by Native Americans (weren’t the Seminoles in that area)? Since Torreya is a 19th century name, what was it called before? I know these questions are somewhat off the eco-path, but I’m just curious.

Let’s wish the best for both the Torreya taxifola in its native habitat and its survival as a species at large.

Stacey,
Beijing

Comment on June 22 posting by Stacey Duff: 

Stacey made a very helpful posting on the edibility of the Korean species of genus Torreya.  There are 3 or 4 species of Torreya in eastern Asia, and 2 in North America.  The California Torreya can still easily be found.  I have visited 5 different wild groves in Yosemite NP, Sequoia NP, and 3 places in the Coast Range. (See <http://www.torreyaguardians.org/california.html> for photo-essays of all these site visits.)

Cultural documentation lists the native Americans eating the seed of California Torreya.  So why is the “Florida” species the only one of the genus that is endangered?

I suspect any of 3 possible reasons.

The first is purely physical.  “Florida” Torreya is the only Torreya species that does not live in a mountain habitat.  My assessment is that, except for peak glacial periods, “Florida” Torreya was, in fact, a mountain species: that it used to live in the Appalachians and simply got stuck in the “pocket reserve” where it waited out the peak glacial period, along with all of our beloved eastern deciduous forest species, along the Apalachicola River of the Florida Panhandle.  Thus, it is the only one of the 5 species that has no easy way to quickly migrate to cooler habitat by heading upslope.

The second and third reasons would have exacerbated the problem of losing contact with its presumed mountain home.  Both pertain to the arrival of the first peoples into North America, beginning perhaps 5,000 years after the peak glacial.  Because “Florida” Torreya survived the glacial peak in just the Apalachicola pocket reserve, it is possible that local extirpation of small game deprived the tree of the seed dispersers (squirrels, possibly tortoises) essential for helping the tree move north.  The third possibility draws from Stacey’s observation:  Given the large seed’s attraction as food, and the tree’s extreme endemism within its tiny pocket reserve, perhaps the human arrivals overharvested the seeds.

For all these reasons, I conclude that the only way to properly attend to the needs of this highly endangered conifer is to ensure that our ecological knowledge of the plant is supplemented with as much deep-time evolutionary knowledge as we can acquire (and imagine).

Together for Torreya,
Connie Barlow

Thank you for this well written article.  I must admit that I had never heard of assisted migration.  It is a very interesting concept and one to keep in mind for the future.  I am a professional horticulturist and have been more interested in conservation in the last 10 years of my 35 year long career.  We had a Torreya taxifolia growing in Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, south of Miami, where I have worked for the past 35 years.  It died several years ago, perhaps due to damage during Hurricane Andrew.

I am intrigued by the concept of assisted migration for saving endangered species.  This might be the only answer for some species.  I plan on forwarding this article to our conservation team.

A very challenging article ... well done.

We know that global warming has already occurred and that it threatens many species. As greenhouse gas levels continue to rise, further negative change will happen to the world’s ecosystems and its biodiversity. For some species this means certain extinction ... highly specialised species such as the Mountain Pygmy Possum in alpine Australia has no where to go ... going higher up mountains is not an option because it already lives near the tops. Taking the animal elsewhere is also not an option because it eats a highly specialised Australian diet, not found, say, in the Swiss Alps! Ditto for Polar Bears as they lose ice flows etc in the Arctic ... there is no other suitable habitat they can go to (given a bipolar meltdown). Hence, assisted migration in an active sense (relocation) is not a viable option. Islands, isolated National Parks and other ‘fenced’ reserves will become climate traps.

What we need to do if we are serious about saving species under threat from warming-induced habitat change is to create massive North - South biodiversity corridors that extend the length of whole continents. Such biodiversity migration corridors would have to be big enough to allow the unassisted migration of biodiversity (plants and animals) both north and south of their current ranges in relation to the Equator. We would also need to create new ‘altitude reserves’ where species are free to move, where it is possible, to higher, more suitable altitudes.

Human development that impedes such free movement will need to be removed (fences, road and rail corridors, settlements etc etc).

The choice is clear, we must save biodiversity and we must do so by, as far as is now possible, preserving habitat. If habitat is changing slowly enough for species to adapt by moving, then we must allow them to freely move. Actively intervening and relocating species (assisted migration) is the desperate act of a dominant species that is getting every other aspect of its relationship to nature wrong. Given such a sorry history, we are unlikely to get this final band aid act right and the failure will divert much needed time, resources and energy from the main game.

The main game is now the conservation of planet earth for all species .... including, if Gaia is sufficiently forgiving, us. To have any chance of maintaining ecosystem health we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions to safe levels and allow an endemic sense of place to re-emerge for all species.

Assisted colonization was the topic of a paper by Hoegh-Guldberg et al. in last Friday’s Science. My criticism of the idea is here