From "
When to welcome ‘invading’ species: Climate refugees challenge environmental distinctions between friend vs foe" by Janet Raloff on ScienceNews:
As climate changes, some environments are becoming hostile to the flora and fauna that long nurtured them. Species that can migrate have begun to move into regions where temperatures and humidity are more hospitable. And that can prove a conundrum for officials charged with halting the invasion of non-native species, says Jon Jarvis, a biologist who for the past year has headed the National Park Service.
One problem: What’s native? Species move at will as conditions change. What’s native in one century may be gone five generations later. Newly arrived species, meanwhile, may be environmental refugees.
“Policies that are currently in place view those [immigrants] as exotics,” Jarvis says — invading homesteaders that should, at all costs, be evicted. But such species may be on the move simply “because this is their last refuge,” he points out.
Read the complete ScienceNews article
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