Abstract
The Earth’s climate is changing at a faster pace than the slow natural adjustment rates of most species to their rapidly shifting habitat conditions, especially for long-lived tree species, such as the iconic coast redwood Sequoia sempersqvirens. This may leave some species stranded in less than optimal environments, resulting in population extinctions and/or the need for human-assisted migration. However, the implementation of assisted migration does not come without economic, legal, political, ecological, and ethical issues. One of the most important and complex social questions regarding assisted migration is that of the land use planning community in the area being considered. This article explores the subjective beliefs among these stakeholders regarding managed migration of coast redwood trees into suitable habitats in Oregon. Q-methodology was used to structure the complexity of participants’ subjective beliefs into a few manageable themes to reveal broader socio-economic and environmental perspectives and shared ways of perceiving and valuing the relationship between social, economic, and environmental concerns. The findings of this study suggest two main factors 1) positively ranked values that align on new perspectives of utilitarian ecological values, and 2) positively ranked values that align on a land based communitarian perspective. This convergence suggests an ecologically aware land management ethos as opposed to the view of favoring human’s dominion over nature, and therefore bolsters the potential for the future success of managed migration of coast redwoods into suitable habitats in Oregon given the state’s existing land use policy.
Highlights
1.1 Global Climate Change Impacts to Species DistributionEcosystems are rapidly being transformed into configurations that differ in composition and/or function from present and past systems
The response of species to past (Benton & Twitchett, 2003) and recent (Root et al, 2003) climate change and the fact that the Earth is set to become warmer than any period in the last 40 million years (Houghton et al, 2001) raises the concern that anthropogenic climate change could act as a major cause of extinctions soon (Thomas, Cameron, Green, & Williams, 2004)
This study investigates the subjective beliefs of environmental change and lands management among the Oregon land use planning community, particiularly regarding assisted migration of coast redwoods to the Oregon coast
Summary
Ecosystems are rapidly being transformed into configurations that differ in composition and/or function from present and past systems. This transformation, is recognized as a consequence of environmental alteration and changing species distributions owing to climate and land use change (Harris, Hobbs, Higgs, & Aronson, 2006; Root & Schneider, 2006). Climate change scenarios and species distribution models predict modest to major geographic shifts in the distribution of species over the century. The Earth’s climate is changing at a faster pace than the slow natural adjustment rates of most species to shifting habitat conditions (Davis & Shaw, 2001; Hulme, 2005), especially for long-lived tree species
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