As climate warms, species may need to migrate or perish

It may be hard to imagine an endangered species turning into an ecological monster. Yet a number of animals and plants have undergone exactly this makeover. The Australian Paperbark Tree is endangered in its native Australia, thanks to logging on private land. Around 1900 the tree was introduced into southern Florida, where it has spread aggressively, shutting out native trees from its dense stands and frequently catching ablaze.

Simberloff says he doesn’t have any good solutions to offer in the place of managed relocation. “That doesn’t mean that the best thing to do is try something that either might not work or might have unintended consequences that are even worse,” he warns.

Hellmann thinks that Simberloff and Ricciardi raise some important points, and she herself doesn’t think managed relocation will ever be able to help more than a small fraction of the species that will be threatened by climate change. But she believes that Simberloff and Ricciardi are drawing the wrong conclusions from the situation.

“Is the alternative just to forsake a species?” she asks. “I just don’t want to sit back and say, ‘Oh the world is going to hell’.”