Editor's Note: The following is an edited and expanded excerpt from Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World by Emma Marris. Copyright  © 2011 Emma Marris.

Jessica Hellmann, an ecologist at Notre Dame University in Indiana, is in the midst of exactly the kind of painstaking study that can help guide those who want to move species. Hellmann works, among other places, on Vancouver Island, studying a kind of oak savanna ecosystem that most people associate with California. The star players of these savannas are called Garry oaks or Oregon white oaks, large trees often gnarled into unique shapes. Under their canopies grow mossy meadows of wildflowers, including buttercups and star- shaped blue camas. For Canadians, this kind of ecosystem is a beloved break from the evergreens that otherwise dominate the landscape. And according to the nonprofit Garry Oak Ecosystems Recovery Team, "approximately 100 species of plants, mammals, reptiles, birds, butterflies and other insects are officially listed as 'at risk' in these ecosystems" in Canada. The range of these Garry oak savannas hugs the Pacific coast from central California to just about halfway up Vancouver Island. These savannas are quite rare in Canada and threatened by land development. Hellmann thinks that British Columbians might be interested in establishing such ecosystems farther north on the island or even on the province's mainland as the climate warms. So one set of questions that her study is asking bears directly on whether such a move would work.

For example, what are the essential components of a Garry oak savanna? Which of these are limiting its range in the North? Will the Garry oak systems be able to move themselves? If so, will the more mobile components of the ecosystem, such as the butterflies, move first? And if one were to move the ecosystem, would it be best to use the organisms from the northern edge of the range to seed the new site, or would organisms from the center of the range fare better? This last question is important because Hellmann expects that the butterflies, oaks, and other constituents of the system will prove to genetically vary as one moves from south to north. The butterflies on Vancouver Island, for example, are genetically different from their cousins on the mainland. "Would you take that whole gradient and scootch everybody?" asks Hellmann.

Getting the answers to these questions all starts with renting a house. Ecological research is a lot of work, and results that can be summarized in a sentence or two represent the hard-won outcome of years of logistical management, grueling days of fieldwork, and caffeine-fueled writing binges. To learn about the dynamics of Garry oak savannas on Vancouver Island, Hellmann had to first get grant money to do the work by putting together a proposal compelling enough to beat out its rivals. Once she got the money, she had to set up a local headquarters, in this case a house in Ladysmith, British Columbia. She then recruited a team, including Caroline Williams, a Ph.D. student from the University of Ontario, and André Burnier, an undergraduate from Brown, to do much of the daily work. With the help of satellite photos and a tour of the island in a rental car, she identified Garry oak sites and sites where Garry oak might conceivably migrate, designed several experiments, bought equipment to collect data and raise butterflies, jerry-rigged the data-collection devices so they would survive out in the field, and procured vehicles for the team. And this is only one of two headquarters. She had to go through the same rigmarole for a team at the center of the Garry oak savanna range in Oregon. The Oregon sites act as controls to which she compares findings at the edges of the range.

5 Comments

1. 1. robert schmidt 11:14 PM 10/14/11

   Normally I would say that assisted migration is a dangerous thing but one has to consider that the rate of change is much faster than these systems are accustomed to and many ecosystems are now fragmented by human development so natural migration is difficult if not impossible. I would take a cue from the margin of the ecosystems as to how they transition from one biome to another but draw a new population from as wide a genetic base as possible. It is almost impossible to predict what traits will be off most benefit in a new system.

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2. 2. robert schmidt in reply to Nagnostic 12:29 PM 10/15/11

   I think that is a bit of a stretch. The fact that we share dna with all other living things on this planet kinda rules that out. Besides, one first has to prove that multiple universes exist, then, that it is possible for one to move between universes before one could even consider that possibility.
   
   Besides, humanity's effects on the planet are very similar to the effects of cancer on the body. We have metastasised, we have move outside our original niche, we are consuming resources at a rate that is much higher than the planet's ability to create them and we are shutting down important ecological processes that are required in order for the earth to sustain life, just as cancer kills by destroying organ function. So, there is nothing other-universy about us. Sadly our place on this planet is nothing to be proud of.

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3. 3. robert schmidt in reply to Nagnostic 03:44 PM 10/15/11

   Actually you were being an idiot and a totally believable one at that. You also revealed yourself to be one of the typical low life scumbags that troll this site. Kind of pathetic that you try to compensate for your intellectual disabilities with idiotic comments. Or perhaps you were just demonstrating what I said about humanity being a cancer.

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4. 4. SweaterFish 04:01 PM 10/15/11

   It's not clear what Hellman's quote in the final paragraph refers to. Is she saying that the horticultural trade isn't going to pick up and move things like beetles and soil organisms or that even concerted efforts at ecosystem relocation will fail to move everything? Well, whichever she actually did mean, it does seem unlikely to me that we would be able to successfully recreate an entire ecosystem in a new location. First, our understanding of the complexity of real ecosystems is miniscule compared their actual functioning. Beyond a small handful of intensively researched species like garry oaks or swallowtail butterflies, we don't know which of the millions of other organisms in an ecosystem are critically important, what their critical proportions are relative to other organisms, what kind of spatial distributions they need, etc. Second, the idea of moving an ecosystem into a new range oversimplifies the actual patterns climate change is bringing. It's not true that suitable climates for an entire ecosystem will simply move further north or further upslope. Climate change can be expected to alter some, but not all of the climate patterns in a region, many will still be based on large and small scale topographic features and so will nto change. The organisms in an ecosystem have different ranges of tolerance, even if some will be able to thrive in a new habitat, say further north, it's not certain that all of them will.

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5. 5. eco-steve 06:13 PM 10/23/11

   The article rightly refers to soil bacteria which would need to be displaced. Soil feeds us, yet we know next to nothing about the diversity and interactions of soil bacteria. Fungi too would have to be dispaced to ensure that vegetation can feed itself.
   So much remains to be learned and yet so much time needed study it all. Yet science will be our only salvation. Man has always studied nature but we are changing it recklessly.

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