Environmental Management and Restoration in a Changing Climate - Restoration Ecology: The New Frontier - page 27

Hence climate change in many ways is simply bringing
the requirement for improved conservation planning
and management into sharper focus. However, Heller
and Zavaleta (2009) also found that, for many recom-
mendations, there is little specifi city about how, by
whom and under what conditions they can be imple-
mented. In other words, most recommendations cur-
rently deal in generality rather than providing specifi c
guidance in particular situations. The problem of
moving from the general to the specifi c has been rec-
ognized often, and recently there have been attempts
to provide general checklists of issues to be considered
and adapted in the context of specifi c systems or situ-
ations (Lindenmayer et al . 2008 ). These include recog-
nizing the importance of landscape mosaics (including
terrestrial-aquatic linkages), maintaining the capacity
to recover from disturbance and managing landscapes
in an adaptive framework. These broad considerations
are infl uenced by landscape context, species assem-
blages and management goals and need to be adapted
accordingly for on - the - ground management. Two
important requirements are a clearly articulated vision
for landscape conservation and quantifi able objectives
that offer unambiguous signposts for measuring
progress (Lindenmayer et al . 2008 ).
Climate change and the resulting biotic responses
provide multiple challenges for conservation. Species
ranges are likely to shift and species assemblages are
likely to change (see also Chapters 20 and 21). The
biotic assemblage will respond to not only the direct
climatic changes but also the changed incidence of epi-
sodic events, altered fi re, fl ooding and other distur-
bance regimes, and changes in disease and pest
prevalence. Increasingly, active intervention may be
required to achieve conservation goals as currently
formulated and previous ' hands - off ' approaches to
reserve management may no longer be suffi cient
(Hobbs et al . 2010). Increasing levels of intervention
seem inevitable (Figure 3.2). Particularly in the United
States, approaches to reserve and wilderness manage-
ment based on the 'natural' system are under question
- what constitutes 'natural' in a rapidly changing
human-dominated world? However, if we abandon
existing norms and concepts, what will replace them?
The options include utilizing concepts such as ecosys-
tem integrity and resilience (Cole & Yung 2010 ;
Hobbs et al . 2010). Climate change will not lessen the
requirement for traditional place-based management
(set-aside reserves, etc.) but may render it insuffi cient.
If a reserve has been designated because it contains a

Protection of species
and places

Conservation

Removal/amelioration
of threats

Passive restoration

Active alteration of abiotic
and/or biotic characteristics

Active restoration

Designer ecosystems
Ecosystem engineering

Creation of new systems
for desired 'services'

Managed relocation/
assisted migration

'Anticipatory' conservation

Figure 3.2 Increasing levels of intervention, from
traditional ' preservation ' - focused conservation through
active restoration and design of ecosystems which fulfi l
specifi c purposes.

particular species or set of species, what happens to
that reserve if the species no longer occur there because
they have moved elsewhere in response to a changing
climate? And where do these species move to? The
reserve system worldwide is patchy and unrepresenta-
tive, and there is increasing recognition that the
surrounding landscape can be very important in deter-
mining the overall success of local conservation efforts
(Daily et al . 2001 ; Ranganathan et al . 2008 ). This is
likely to become even more relevant under climate
change.
Determining landscape confi gurations which facili-
tate movement of species under threat from changing
climates will be an important process. However, beyond
that, there is also increasing discussion of the desira-
bility and practicality of deliberately moving species
in anticipation of changing climates. The process of
assisted migration or managed relocation remains con-
troversial, although there have been recent attempts to
consider the circumstances under which it might or
might not be considered (Hoegh-Guldberg et al . 2008 ;
Richardson et al . 2009). Given the uncertainty sur-
rounding the rate and direction of climate change at
local and regional scales, it will remain diffi cult to
predict future ranges for many species with any degree
of certainty. However, some groups are already con-
ducting such relocations: for instance, Torreya taxifolia
has been relocated by the Torreya Guardians in the
south-eastern United States (Shirey & Lamberti 2011).
The issues surrounding such activities are as much
ethical as ecological, and are forcing a rethink of con-
servation norms and policy (Minteer & Collin 2010).