The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which includes more than 1,300 scientists from the United States and other countries, forecasts a temperature rise of 2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century. (Photo credit IPCC)
In the coming years, climate change is predicted to be a major factor contributing to species extinctions. Many species will struggle to persist in the habitats they once occupied as ecosystems shift due to increases in temperature and greater variability in precipitation.
As governments and conservation organization set goals for habitat conservation to help ameliorate these effects, such as preserving 30% of land in the U.S. by 2030, we need to consider which strategies will be most effective at preserving biodiversity under shifting and uncertain future conditions. In the face of climate change, should we do more of the same, or adjust our strategies?
Traditional approaches, such as the creation of protected areas connected by corridors, set aside habitat for species and allow them to move through the landscape. These approaches aim at increasing effective population size and gene transfer between smaller populations. They have worked well, and are estimated to have kept species loss down 20% below levels if we had not intervened. But, will they continue to be as effective? Two recent reviews explore this question.
The first review explores the opportunities and risks of different practices under climate change, and argues that evolutionary principles need to be considered alongside the ecological in conservation plans. To avoid unintended and negative evolutionary outcomes and help with species persistence, scientists, conservation managers, and other decision makers should focus on practices that help species adapt, and quickly. For example, within preserved lands, species may evolve in response to new conditions, but their ability to keep up with the pace of climate change will depend on the amount of genetic and trait variability present in the population.
The second review suggests prioritizing lands based on “climate exposure”, or their general risk from climate change. The Yellowstone to Yukon initiative (Y2Y) serves as a model for this practice, as they take a broad, landscape scale perspective to highlight areas for conservation. In addition, the authors suggest taking more active approaches alongside the traditional. These strategies, which could provide extra assistance to wildlife recovery, include rewilding, assisted gene flow, assisted evolution, artificial selection, and genetic engineering.
Both studies find that traditional strategies, such as the creation of conservation corridors, are valid and increasingly important with climate change. But in response to changing conditions, interconnected areas must optimize factors related to this pressure, such as facilitating the movement along environmental gradients, or optimizing genetic variation within and across populations.
References:
Gaitán‐Espitia, J.D. and Hobday, A.J. 2021. Evolutionary principles and genetic considerations for guiding conservation interventions under climate change. Global Change Biology 27(3): 475-488.
