Assisted colonization: good intentions and dubious risk assessment

摘要

Assisted colonization is an issue that merits greater scrutiny, and skepticism, than it has received thus far, and so we hope that this debate continues. The letters received in response to our recent article [1] reflect not only the fervor of the debate but also a tendency (for those who advocate the use of assisted colonization) to underestimate the risks of invasion and overestimate ecologists' ability to forecast those risks. Some proponents have begun to use the term ‘managed relocation,' perhaps because it sounds less active and therefore more innocuous, but it is another synonym to describe the process of moving species into regions in which they have never previously occurred.