The mother of all conservation moves

This past week, the Science Times ran this article, "Unnatural Preservation", on how climate change changes the rules of conservation:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/science/earth/29habi.html?ref=science&pagewanted=all

The article portrays the hand-wringing of conservation biologists faced with the confounding factor of a changing climate. Is it, for example, worth trying to save some plant or animal in a preserve where its vulnerability to rising temperatures and its limited ability to find more suitable living conditions will likely make it succumb anyway? Should we, perhaps, sign up United Van Lines to help stage the mother of all moves, to a more hospitable clime, that climate-distressed organisms cannot manage on their own – often because of man-made barriers?

The article's presentation glides silently by two remarkable aspects of this topic. One has to do with accepting the science that motivates the portrayed agonizing over alternative approaches to conservation in the face of a warming climate. The other has to do with the peculiar nature of that agonizing.

First, some brief remarks about the recent history of the scientific premise behind the discussion: Most biologists would expect that many organisms would respond to changes in the temperature (among other factors) with adaptive changes of their own. They see this clearly in the evolution of species throughout geological history. In particular, in times of warming, species have tended to migrate to higher latitudes and to higher elevations. These changes in distribution and relative abundance at a given latitude and elevation are, in turn, bases for finding or confirming the climatic changes that cause them.

Additionally, biologists would expect what they call "phenological shifts". Organisms remaining in increasingly warm conditions would tend to shift their seasonal behavior – doing their "spring thing" (migrating, breeding, nesting, egg laying, flowering, budding) sooner rather than later.

Both the presence of these biological responses and the causal inference from the recent rapid changes in climate have stubbornly resisted universal acceptance – even after the reality of modern climate change became incontrovertible well over a decade ago. The element of controversy is evident in the defensive tone of these Nature papers from 2003, which lay out the case. You may assess it for yourself:

Permesan, C., and Yohe, G., "A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems", Nature, 421 (2 January 2003), pp. 37-42 (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v421/n6918/full/nature01286.html)

Root, T.L., et. al., "Fingerprints of global warming on wild animals and plants", Nature, 421 (2 January 2003), pp. 57-60 (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v421/n6918/full/nature01333.html or
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/TLRetal-NaturePublished.pdf)

Second, we turn to what may be the even more interesting "adaptive response" of the scientists themselves. The prevailing sentiment expressed by the scientists cited in the article is that a changing climate is a dramatically complicating variable in understanding how we should do conservation. But in the end, it is "just" one more variable. We "just" need to take the effects of climate change into account in managing the world's biogeosphere – moving plants and animals hither and yon, "triaging" the doomed, deciding whether or not to build barrier islands to thwart the terrestrial intrusions of rising seas.

The scientists acknowledge the uncertainty of the effects of climate change (as contrasted with the certainty of its happening), but they seem to regard that uncertainly as yet another biosphere engineering variable, albeit a difficult one. For them, radical uncertainly doesn't change the nature of the problem. The problem remains fundamentally the same, just a bit more difficult, with a few more variables, including some representing uncertainty.

Apparently, for these scientists, the project is to engineer ever more precise and intricate manipulations of ecosystems. No matter that radical uncertainty gives them essentially no hope of knowing what the outcomes will be. No matter that "assisted migration" is essentially the systematic introduction of exotic species, which is known to be a major contributor to the great Pleistocene-Holocene extinction, currently underway and accelerating. Not one cited scientist seems to acknowledge the possibility – or, given the radical uncertainty of outcomes – the likelihood that their manipulations will increase devastation of biota rather than decrease it.

Why do scientists just "stick to the program", despite the apparent madness of it? The reason is easy to grasp. No matter how hard the engineering puzzle, playing engineer is the easy thing to do. It lets us fool ourselves into thinking that we're doing something. And surely, we have to do something.

Yes, something is required of us. But just as surely, to act out of desperation just for the sake of acting – without any legitimate basis for knowing whether we will increase or decrease harm – is tragic foolishness.

It's more than foolish. In a less obvious way, but with high likelihood, an insistent focus on engineering tricks will inevitably increase the harm – by giving us license to avoid considering changes that we really need. Those are changes in the attitudes and behaviors responsible for the harm in the first place. Left unquestioned, the same attitudes and behaviors will ultimately guarantee a situation so irretrievably dire that not even the cleverest or (more apropos) luckiest of interventions could possibly succeed.

The project of critically examining our values contrasts in two ways with the project of ever more arcane feats of engineering. On the one hand, it is a far more difficult thing to get ourselves to do. But on the other hand, the values involved and the attitudes and behaviors they entail are far easier to surmise than the tortured manipulations of conservation biologists.

In fact, at least some values seem to be quite obvious, as do some of the actions that flow from them. Roads are barriers to adaptation. Yet we continue to build (or try to build) them. Shoreline development is a barrier to wetland migration. Yet we continue to do it. Just this past week, the California Coastal Commission considered a proposal to build a road through (not to) a coastal California state park (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/06/us/06beach.html). The proposed road would have been a barrier in both above-mentioned ways. Fortunately, the Commission saw fit to deny the developers a critical permit. But why would we even seriously consider such a thing? In this case, the goal was simple – to provide more pavement so that more cars can be crammed between San Diego and Los Angeles.

What, we should ask, are the values that lead us to view this kind of road (and many others) as preeminently valuable? In light of what different values would this attitude be viewed as unacceptable and not even worthy of serious consideration?

In all the uncertainty of how biota will react to changes in climate, we may be able to glean one certainty. It is that, so long as we continue to behave as we currently do – aided and abetted by the attitudes and values that now predominate – we will inexorably increase the harm to the natural world, the adaptive capacity of plants and animals will be exceeded, and no engineering trick – no matter how clever – will be able to counteract or compensate for that.

That leaves open the question of how we should behave in the presence of the adaptive plight that we have already inflicted on our fellow creatures. The first, most obvious suggestion is to understand in what ways we have inflicted the harm and to stop inflicting further harm in those ways. If building roads is screwing things up, then we should stop building them. If shoreline development is critically undermining the adaptive capacity of coastline habitats, then for goodness' sake, let's stop it!

The second suggestion seems equally obvious but far more difficult to contemplate – perhaps even unimaginable – without a serious re-evaluation of values. If we have literally built obstacles that seriously constrain and thereby compromise the natural world, then should we not consider removing or moving those obstacles? Why do we consider only moving the natural systems whose adaptive movements and processes we have impounded? Suppose that we convince ourselves of the fantasy of being able to move intact, or at least functioning natural systems hither and yon. With no change in values, shouldn't we expect that "hither and yon" to succumb to the same kind of human incursion? Shouldn't we expect that will happen until neither hither nor yon remains?

Perhaps we should employ United Van Lines for the mother of all moves. But the purpose would not be to move and thereby further decimate the paltry remains of natural systems that we have already fragmented and nearly destroyed. Rather, it would be to move us, or (at least) the fabrications that are instruments of our damaging influence, far enough away to give those systems some breathing space and a fighting chance to survive.

Of course, a full answer to the question of how to help our fellow creatures is not anywhere near that simple, because damaging human influence extends well beyond our most obvious physical artifacts. But the changed values that supports this way of thinking may have some chance of dealing with the complex realities of human alterations of, and damage to natural systems.

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