“With the climate changing more rapidly than species can move or adapt, our only chance of saving some species may be to move them to more climatically suitable areas,” says lead author Dr Tracy Rout of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions. “But introducing species to areas outside their historical range is a controversial strategy – and we have to be sure it will work, both for the animals themselves and for other species in their ‘new’ habitat.”
Rout was able to draw on pre-existing tools. “Australia has a risk assessment process for importing species to decide whether they have the characteristics to become invasive,” she says. The same methodology can be used to decide whether a species threatened in its old territory might become a threat to others in the new.
Other important factors to consider are how likely a species is to become extinct if efforts are not made to relocate representatives, and how much it is valued.
Rout admits that no model can decide for us how important species are. “Some are valued for their iconic status. Others have an important role in the ecology, but of course that may not be the case when moved to a new ecosystem. There will always be some kind of value judgement, but we are trying to separate that judgement out from the science.”
To test the model, Rout and New Zealand colleagues explored...
