Alejandro E. Camacho

Multidimensional evaluation of managed relocation

Managed relocation (MR) has rapidly emerged as a potential intervention strategy in the toolbox of biodiversity management under climate change. Previous authors have suggested that MR (also referred to as assisted colonization, assisted migration, or assisted translocation) could be a last-alternative option after interrogating a linear decision tree. We argue that numerous interacting and value-laden considerations demand a more inclusive strategy for evaluating MR. The pace of modern climate change demands decision making with imperfect information, and tools that elucidate this uncertainty and integrate scientific information and social values are urgently needed. We present a heuristic tool that incorporates both ecological and social criteria in a multidimensional decision-making framework. For visualization purposes, we collapse these criteria into 4 classes that can be depicted in graphical 2-D space. This framework offers a pragmatic approach for summarizing key dimensions of MR: capturing uncertainty in the evaluation criteria, creating transparency in the evaluation process, and recognizing the inherent tradeoffs that different stakeholders bring to evaluation of MR and its alternatives.

Managed Relocation: Integrating the Scientific, Regulatory, and Ethical Challenges

Managed relocation is defined as the movement of species, populations, or genotypes to places outside the areas of their historical distributions to maintain biological diversity or ecosystem functioning with changing climate. It has been claimed that a major extinction event is under way and that climate change is increasing its severity. Projections indicating that climate change may drive substantial losses of biodiversity have compelled some scientists to suggest that traditional management strategies are insufficient. The managed relocation of species is a controversial management response to climate change. The published literature has emphasized biological concerns over difficult ethical, legal, and policy issues. Furthermore, ongoing managed relocation actions lack scientific and societal engagement. Our interdisciplinary team considered ethics, law, policy, ecology, and natural resources management in order to identify the key issues of managed relocation relevant for developing sound policies that support decisions for resource management. We recommend that government agencies develop and adopt best practices for managed relocation.

Managing Ecosystem Effects in an Era of Rapid Climate Change

Climate change is exerting significant pressure on ecosystems. Without management strategies that impede harmful invasions and help vulnerable resources adapt, biodiversity and ecological function will likely decline. However, governing processes are too often insufficiently adaptive, and many resource laws are not designed primarily to facilitate biodiversity or promote ecological health. Many laws are primarily directed at promoting consumptive use; others on promoting historical fidelity; still others on limiting human management. Global climate change causes these various conservation goals to be increasingly at odds with each other and with promoting biodiversity. Except in rare circumstances when decline in ecological health is deemed an acceptable trade-off for historical fidelity, non-intervention, and/or human consumption or development, natural resources laws must be better adapted to accommodate change not only through adaptive management measures that integrate flexibility into regulatory processes, but also by promoting substantive goals that emphasize ecological health.