"New federal regulations require rethinking our approach to conservation".
"Last year, more than 100 million people were forced to flee their homes following climate-related disasters. Extreme heat and weather are shifting the areas fit for habitation—and not just for humans. Climate change is turning other vulnerable species into refugees as well.
Elise Bennett, a lifelong Floridian and senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, is confronted with this reality on a daily basis. Bennett works with the center’s Florida and Caribbean program, where she advocates for endangered species whose habitats are being eaten away by climate change.
One of those species is the key deer (Odocoileus virginianus clavium). Reddish-brown and around the size of a golden retriever, only about 1,000 remain in the wild. As sea levels rise and saltwater intrudes on the island forests they call home, these diminutive deer are quickly running out of real estate, Bennett says. The last desperate hope might be to move them off their native islands before they’re swallowed by the sea, Atlantis-style. Unfortunately, wildlife officials haven’t been able to relocate the deer to new areas because the Endangered Species Act prohibited it.
But a recently updated federal regulation just put that option on the table. In July, the US Fish and Wildlife Service changed its policy around the practice of “assisted migration”—a controversial strategy that involves moving an endangered species to a new area (often outside of its historic range) when its native habitat becomes too hot, too dry, too salty, or otherwise unsuitable to live in. Specifically, FWS removed the so-called historic range clause in section 10 of the Endangered Species Act. The update effectively means that wildlife officials might be able to relocate the key deer and species like it to new, more suitable habitats. But doing so may prove physically and ethically tricky—and it may require us to rethink our current conservation paradigm."
Joanna Thompson reports for Sierra magazine October 12, 2023.
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