The term "assisted migration" has recently been used most often in the context of anticipating global climate change. It does not generally refer to the construction of alternate paths for migratory species, but rather to moving a threatened species to a location outside of its current range. It can also refer to the creation of north-south corridors and other efforts to assist a natural, one-time migration of more vagile species. Off the top of my head, a term like "whole-species translocation" would have avoided this confusion.
A recent paper in ConBio attempts to explore the debate and frame it while still in its infancy: McLachlan, JS; Hellmann, JJ; Schwartz, MW. A framework for debate of assisted migration in an era of climate change. CONSERVATION BIOLOGY, 21 (2): 297-302 APR 2007 The website of the group referenced in the first paragraph of the above paper is here, and includes a suggested set of criteria to consider when making the decision translocate a species: http://www.torreyaguardians.org/standards.html A NY Times article back in January described the debate here: http://tinyurl.com/24y44y My biggest concern with assisted migration is that we can't model the temperature rise well enough to predict with certainty what the climate of a specific location will be in a given year. I wonder also what year would be chosen - like so many factors, it would probably have to be determined on a case-by-case basis, depending on whether it would be possible to revisit the process in 2030 if we then predict a more precipitous rise in temperatures. Joe Ledvina Department of Forestry and Natural Resources 265 Lehotsky Hall Clemson University Office: 864.656.3054 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
