Chris D. Thomas 2011 (Trends in ecology and Evolution): Translocation of species, climate change, and the end of trying to recreate past ecological communities
Conversation planning Journal Club 23.6.2011
We pick up this paper for two reasons: Firstly, translocation of species is an important and very relevant topic and the conversation around it has gain strength within the rise of the awareness of problematic nature of climate change and the share humans are responsible for its acceleration. Secondly, we were interested to hear what Chris Thomas has to say about this subject. After read and discussed the paper in our Journal Club we felt somewhat confused. We wondered that the tune of the paper was too positive. It felt more like lobbying-paper than hard expertise showing scientific opinion-paper (is there such?). And we were waiting more just an “opinion”. For a paper published in TREE we expect more scientific proof. WE think references are poor and scientific feeling is more or less lazy. This is more like politics – he is not telling bad things just trying to polish the goods.
We found some issues that had a negative impact on the credibility of the paper.
1) The paper didn’t take sides whether the species which were mentioned were in danger for some other reasons too and not only due to climate.
2) Species follow their ecological niche but the location of the niche is random – not transcontinental. This paper concentrates on species which have small distributions and they are vulnerable.
3) The British examples are quite poor – they are not about habitats but about climate conditions and food (Lynx b)
4) The aspect “we gain lot of new species” cannot be the most important result. This result doesn’t take into account for example relationships and interactions between species, conservation of habitats and loss of resources (for example money) if translocations fail.
5) Excuse reason cannot be that “everyone else does it”.
6) Thomas has looked for every single positive side of translocations.
Nevertheless the paper points out some aspects that we support strongly. They are such as protection of big areas, connectivity between different features (species, habitats, actions, threads etc.) and high quality of areas that have only low human impact.
One used to think that “nature is in balance”. Now days we know that nature is in continuous change. This cannot be seen in public opinion yet, but time is changing this too. We would like to point out that climate change is not just one event but an ongoing process! So if we translocate species – where on earth are we going to locate them? And we have to remember that the meaning of invasive species will change within the climate change.
And then some trivial points from our conversation…
The biggest numbers of translocations are found in seas. (For example it is estimated that in Baltic sea there is found approximately 80 permanent alien species. Number of alien species found in Baltic Sea altogether is approximately 120: personal communication with Reetta Ljungberg 20.4.2012.) Here “alien species” mean species that couldn’t have came here (or where ever) without human made transmission.
We were left wondering what kind of international translocations have been done.