Shirey and Lamberti Publish Study on Legal Issues Surrounding Assisted Migration

A journal article by Patrick Shirey warns of potential legal problems that could hamper efforts to help species adapt to climate change. The article was published early online and will appear in a future issue of the journal Conservation Letters. Shirey is a graduate student in the GLOBES fellowship program in the Department of Biological Sciences , who earned a master’s degree in wildlife science from New Mexico State University and a law degree from Penn State-Dickinson Law School before coming to Notre Dame. He studied how the Endangered Species Act might apply to moving species out of their historical ranges, sometimes called assisted migration or assisted colonization, and discovered that bureaucratic regulations attached to the law in the 1980s could arm opponents of such moves.

“The paper represents a call to arms or a call to caution, depending on your perspective” says Gary Lamberti, the chair of the Department of Biological Sciences who is Shirey’s advisor and co-author of the article. “When we’re thinking about moving organisms around because of climate change or other environmental factors, we need to think about the legal framework that will enable or not enable us to do that. What Patrick did with his analysis was encourage policy makers and legal scholars to examine the statutes before we reach a crisis point.” As part of the GLOBES program, Shirey also presented his research results to policymakers and congressional staff in Washington, D.C. in October.

Shirey, whose research focuses on historical ecology, says the research grew out of a class taught by Jessica Hellmann and Jason McLachlan, who are international assisted colonization experts in Biological Sciences who also read and commented on the paper. The study revealed the challenges of protecting species in the midst of both global warming and habitat fragmentation, namely urban areas or farmland that can block species’ movements. Government regulations apply to animals, while individuals are able to move plant seeds at will – sometimes leading to unscientific efforts to relocate species. The rules governing animals require that the habitat be irreparably broken – and the species on the verge of extinction – before remedies can be applied. That can be difficult to demonstrate in the context of incremental warming. Shirey says policymakers could adapt the regulations to make managed moves possible.

Read the abstract and article...