Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Stéphane Boyer, senior lecturer at UNITEC Institute of Technology is worried that plants and animals can’t move fast enough to survive climate change. His solution: give nature a helping hand, by digging up entire ecosystems, and moving them hundreds of miles, to maintain optimum climatic conditions.
Climate change threatens entire ecosystems – let’s pick them up and move them
Climate change poses a major threat to the world’s ecosystems. As the world warms, animals and plants will move to keep pace with their preferred climate, but many will be unable to keep up with the speed of change, particularly if humans are in the way.
Programs to move individual species to protect them from climate change already exist. But they are largely limited to those species that are conspicuous, large and charismatic (mostly mammals and birds).
In any given ecosystem, there could be thousands of species (many of which we still don’t know about). Those capable of migrating may have a chance of reaching more hospitable conditions but most species will not be able to cover the large distances required to find a different climate in the short period of time it will take for their environment to change. These ecosystems are effectively fated to disappear, unless of course they could be moved to a safer location.
Picking up and moving entire ecosystems at risk of being wiped out by climate change could be one way to preserve vulnerable plants, animals and insects. It may sound far-fetched, but actually this technique has already been used to deal with other human impacts.
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Many questions remain unanswered. We don’t know how much it will cost, whether people will accept it, or even whether it will do more good than harm. But to protect ecosystems from climate change, we need to consider all the options.
The history of my native Australia is a cautionary tale, on the negative consequences of introducing new species, but also a tale of the adaptability of species.
Rabbits, introduced from temperate England, rapidly colonised the arid Australian desert. They are still a major pest species. For decades, Australia has funded a biological warfare laboratory dedicated to trying to kill the rabbits – so far without lasting success.
The Prickly Pear at its peak took over 15,000 square miles of farmland out of production, because it was so difficult to control. The South American Cactoblastis Cactorum moth was released to control the problem, and largely worked out as expected – though in this case Australia probably got lucky. In other places, Cactoblastis is considered a damaging invasive species.
The poisonous Cane Toad, introduced to control Cane Beetles, rapidly spread throughout tropical regions of Australia, wreaking toxic havoc on native predators, until the more persistent species of local wildlife finally discovered a way to eat them without being poisoned.
My point is, if ecosystems are geographically connected, species will naturally find a way to adapt and / or move in response to climate change, no matter how fast it occurs. There have been many natural abrupt shifts in climate, such as the Younger Dryas, which were a lot faster than anything we are likely to cause. The ecosystem survived just fine.
If ecosystems are geographically isolated from each other, given the havoc individual introduced species can cause, transplanting an entire cross section of one ecosystem into another in my opinion is just environmental vandalism. The combined system will eventually sort itself out, as new patterns emerge. But why do it in the first place?
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Dislocte ecosystems? Why, certainly, because dangerous global warming just may cause them harm. There is always that lurking “dangerous” warming in back of it that is an excuse for stupid, inane and very expensive actions these bozos suggest. They are brainwashed to believe it. It gets worse when they also cite the precautionary principle that fives them the license to act in the absence of any scientific data or observations.
[Please do not disslocktited ecological systems. The ecologists “know” that all ecological systems are pristine and inviolate and never-changing in nature, until and unless viewed for violation by those nasty human-type capitalist exploiters of evil. .mod]
And don’t forget that there is always that lurking “dangerous” cooling, too.
As if the “ecologists” understand ecology well enough to engineer it. Locally, in the Hill Country of Texas, we have a problem with Ashe Juniper, aka cedar. Probably the issue is fire suppression by Anglos, but the problem is real. Of course, a solution would be a bunch of fires, but that could be worse than the problem.
Any chance of unintended consequences with this?
So the logic goes “I worry about plants and animals adapting to climate change over 100 years”, “hmmm? To prevent this danger from slow changes I will move all the plants and animals into a new environment overnight”
See the logic here, to stave off danger of slow change they are going to force immediate change.
Seems legit
Ugh. The wacko environmentalist is the scourge of the planet. Idiot, holier than thou nincompoops!!
Plant life survives proper glaciations. Asteroid strikes, massive volcanic eruptions and all manner of catastrophic events.
Why are lunatics intent on keeping the world exactly the way it is, it’s the stuff of delusional minds. almost all species to ever have existed are extinct, here we come and think we can keep the world just as we wish, same ice, temperature and biological species.
Must be some sort of complex?
..Liberals believe THEY are GODS !
It’s the same problem that views global warming as something that is going on for ever. There is no appreciation of where we stand in the long history of the earth.
NB the same blindness to anything but the immediate present and your own short memory, pervades the stock market, commodity market etc. Nobody can believe that your present environment (plus the immediate past) is not permanent. Dumb investors and most of their advisers think that the present market vacillations are just a blip on a stock market that will keep going up for ever. Skeptics tend to assume, rightly IMHO, that the stock market as it is now configured is not much more than a Ponzi scheme.
Maybe they should move the ecosystem to the planet they come from.
Yes 🙂
Better yet, they should go back there themselves, and leave our planet alone. It’s doing just fine.
Would somebody please put these people in an asylum where they belong? The level of stupid is not funny anymore.
..Then nobody would be left to vote for liberals !! LOL
Two problems that I can see (likely MANY more):
1. If the species are not already where you want to move them to, then that location is not a good habitat for them, and they likely will die off before climate gets to where you fear. (If they are there already, then you’re wasting your (my?) money and time.)
2. For most species, I expect that their habitat is not one square meter. More likely, they live over a range of conditions. So, they wouldn’t have to move from the current warmest extent to past the current coldest extent. If the range were to get warmer, then species would need to migrate from the current coolest to the future warmest extent of the range, which may wind up being zero move at all. For the few species which might have trouble (range limited by altitude), first identify them, and then we can talk.
If a person believes he can command an economy better than all the people making decisions independently in their own interests, then it’s only natural that he would have the hubris to believe he can control ecosystems and biology better than a bunch of seeds, birds and plants. Of course, this brilliiant sombaitch is going to need to control lots of resources to effect such changes. The Department of Interior Relocation is going to be a MONSTER
Marv! Queue The Band!
“Got a Dream Boy, Got A Song, Paint Your Wagon and Come Along!” Yaa Hoo!
Classic Big Green from Team Gangrene.
“We had to destroy the ecology to save it”
In fear of the Great Ghoul Climate Change,we dug up the plants and bulldozed their soil away, sadly the patient passed away due to the aggressive remediation applied…
Eco-Nasties,you just can’t parody them.
Why not do what any greenhouse grower would, Increase CO2 and temperature to increase plant production?
This article reminded me of the story of a Wyoming coal mine, that relocated a tree being used by Bald-headed Eagle for nesting, at the cost of some USD 1 million (in the 80’s), as the tree was in the mine path.
The job was completed with lots of good feeling all round, apart from the unfortunate incident a month or so later, when said bird sat on some power lines and was incinerated.
How many bald eagles are wind turbines allowed to kill?
John Harmsworth,
I’ve seen you’ve searched the internet for my name.
Be assured you’ll find all my relevants at the cementary.
You dire strait have to go after me.
Not amused. Hans
……WT…..???????
Why move the eco-systems? Just planting a few representative species will work just as well.
At first I was inclined to characterize this idea as ‘half-baked’. On reflection it appears to be more of a ‘raw-cookie-dough’ idea with rancid butter, moldy flour and spoiled eggs as the principle ingredients. Baking isn’t gonna help.
What about the species that already exist where you wish to do your Tera-forming?
Might be easier to control continental drift and just move the continents where we need them. /sarc
My mother lives one street away from Unitec. It is not a University, and of course it doesn’t need to be. I should point out for the record that it is in a country which is NOT geographically connected so that migration of land creatures is NOT an option. Whether this particular idea is dumb, I don’t know, but relying on migration would be, if the threat should happen to be real. As things stand, the main threats to native creatures are loss of habitat and introduced predators (cats, dogs, and above all, possums). Which of course raises the question: if you move an ecosystem, where do you put it that doesn’t already have people and their animals or crops?
Imagine the horror when an entire Northern Hemisphere ecosystem is dug up and moved north…only to realize the climate is cooling!