NatureScot Commissioned Report 913 - Feasibility study - translocation of species for the establishment or protection of populations in northerly and or montane environments

Climate change is predicted to have substantial impacts on biodiversity – in some cases driving to extinction species unable to track suitable climatic conditions.

Alpine species are especially at threat, given both their increasing isolation at higher altitudes and the strong control that climatic conditions exert on them. Translocations have been proposed as a means to help conserve any such species that are at risk as our climate changes. But a number of uncertainties surround their application, as highlighted by the literature review carried out for this study.

This study examined field survey and experimental translocations of arctic-alpine lichen Flavocetraria nivalis in the Cairngorms. The aim was to see if it was possible to develop a model to predict the location of suitable habitat for the species, both within and outside of its current range.

While it was possible to develop a model with some predictive ability, its power was relatively limited. This was in large part due to the strong impact of small-scale micro-environmental variability, which was hard to cover in the modelling process.

The work found that when translocating immobile species likely to be strongly influenced by the abiotic environment:

• modelling plus expert judgment is likely to be an effective way to select recipient sites
• it may be necessary to move a large number of transplants to overcome the high mortality due to localised environmental conditions
• we are very unlikely to be able to develop accurate projections of the future location of suitable habitat and environmental conditions
• long-term monitoring is needed to assess whether translocations of slow-growing and slow-responding species have been a success

Published: 2017
Pages: 28

Document downloads