Agile species emerge as a last resort as the climate warms

Editor’s note: This story was written by AP journalists Christina Larson and Matthew Brown

In a desperate attempt to save a species of seabird in Hawaii from rising sea waters, scientists transport chicks to a new island hundreds of miles away.

Relocating species to save them – once considered taboo – is quickly gaining importance as climate change is upending habitats. Similar translocations are suggested for birds, lizards, butterflies, and even flowers.

Concerns remain that the novel practice could cause unintended harm, just as invasive plants and animals have devastated native species.

In this photo provided by Pacific Rim Conservation, wildlife workers relocate Tristram’s petrels on Hawaii’s Tern Island on March 29. AP/2022

But for the Tristram’s petrels on Tern Island in northeastern Hawaii, which is just 6 feet above sea level, the relocation of about 40 chicks to artificial dens more than 500 miles away on Oahu could offer new hope. The species is considered critically endangered and the goal is for the young petrels to return to their new homes when they are old enough to breed.

“Tern Island is being washed away,” said biologist Eric VanderWerf of the nonprofit Pacific Rim Conservation. “Climate change makes this necessary — to move a species out of its known historical range.”

A forthcoming change by the Biden administration to the US Endangered Species Act would make it easier to relocate some of the most endangered species to places where they have not previously been recorded.

In response, state wildlife officials and scientists have proposed relocating a portion of some species struggling with climate change, including South Florida’s Key Deer, the Midwest and Northeast’s blue Karner butterfly, Nevada and California desert flowers, and the Ground of St. Croix lizard in the Virgin Islands.

A Karner Blue butterfly sits on a leaf after being released at the Albany Pine Bush Preserve Commission in Albany, New York. AP Photo/Mike Groll/2015

Republicans in western states — including Montana, New Mexico and Arizona — oppose the proposal, saying it could wreak ecological havoc if “invasive species” are intentionally introduced.

The proposal, which federal officials are expected to finalize in June, reflects a “fundamental shift in the way we think about species protection and conservation,” said University of Notre Dame biologist Jason McLachlan.

The problem goes beyond endangered species, McLachlan said, raising questions about what should be considered “native” now that shifting temperatures are pushing some species to higher elevations or toward the planet’s poles.

Comparable temperature shifts in the past occurred over millennia, but the current one is happening over decades and is drastically upending ecosystems. “At some point we have to start thinking about it in a way that makes people — including me — uncomfortable,” he said. “To say this species is okay and this species is not okay is asking a lot of people.”

To save petrels, VanderWerf says scientists must act before populations collapse.

“In 30 years, these birds will certainly be rare if we don’t do something about it,” he said.

Species relocation outside of historical ranges is still a rarity, but U.S. wildlife officials have identified numerous threatened and endangered plants and animals already impacted by climate change: glacier stoneflies in Montana, emperor penguins in Antarctica, Mt. Rainier -Ptarmigan, the Atlantic Coast Salt Marsh Sparrow and numerous Hawaiian birds.

US Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Karen Armstrong said there are currently no proposals to establish new populations of these special species.

“In the future, some species’ ranges could shift due to climate change, or their current habitats could become unsuitable due to the incursion of invasive species,” Armstrong said in an email. “We see experimental population settlements outside of their historical ranges as a potential tool for their management and conservation.”

One plan currently being considered by US wildlife officials involves birds native to Guam, where kingfishers have been decimated by brown tree snakes accidentally brought to the island on military cargo ships around 1950.

The last 29 wild Guam kingfishers were captured and bred in captivity in the 1980s to buy time. According to a pending proposal, nine kingfishers would be released back into the wild on the island of Palmyra, more than 3,600 miles away, starting this year.

If a translocation is successful, the kingfishers would become one of the few species ever to be upgraded from “extinct in the wild” to “critically endangered.”

The hope is that the Guam kingfisher, also known locally as the sihek, will eventually return to its native island if the tree snake is controlled, said Erica Royer, an ornithologist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Washington, DC

In this December 15, 2021 image provided by the Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, Erica Royer attaches a tracker to a Guam kingfisher in Front Royal, Virginia. AP/2021

“This type of intensive management is necessary so that we have a reasonable chance of keeping some species,” said Don Lyons of the National Audubon Society’s Seabird Institute.

But the potential danger – and the scientific debate – lies in what humans cannot predict. Humanity has been moving species for centuries, often unintentionally and sometimes with great damage.

Examples abound: Asian carp have spread through rivers and streams in the United States. Starlings from Europe destroy crops and drive away songbirds. Eurasian zebra mussels are decimating native populations. And kudzu vines from Japan, planted to stabilize soil, have spread to dozens of states where they are choking out other crops.

University of California, Davis scientist Mark Schwartz said he was initially skeptical about moving species for conservation when biologists began discussing the idea about a decade ago.

The rapid rate of extinctions of late has led him to think that sitting idle could be a costly mistake.

“Many, many species” need to be relocated or could go extinct, said James Watson, a conservation scientist at the University of Queensland in Australia, where increasingly severe, climate-related wildfires have forced talks about resettlement. Unprecedented fires three years ago would have likely destroyed the last habitats of some endangered species, he said.

“We’ve already played Russian roulette with the climate, we’re already on the ski slope – we might as well take more risks.”
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Follow Christina Larson on Twitter: @larsonchristina and Matthew Brown: @MatthewBrownAP
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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