Showing posts with label Conservation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Conservation. Show all posts

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Do We Or Don't We?

Carl Zimmer brings up a very important point that conservation biologists (and all the rest of us who care about this Earth) are facing right now. As climate changes occurs, species move away in search of their natural habitats (as previous records show). However, we now know there are several species that might die if we don't find them a habitat.
The pros for human assisted moves are obvious - we save a threatened species. The cons are numerous - such moves in the past have rarely succeeded, when they did it resulted in threatening the natural habitat where the species was moved or it end up producing "hybrid zones" to name just a few.
As Zimmer puts it, "Which is worse: the risk of creating a new invasive species through assisted migration, or just watching a species become extinct? "
We have a moral dilemma in front of us - I wonder what step to take?