Developing policy on moving threatened species called 'a grand challenge for conservation'
the act of purposely relocating a threatened species, population, or genotype to an area that is foreign to its natural historyis a controversial response to the threat of extinction resulting from climate change. An article in the August 2012 issue of BioScience by Mark W. Schwartz and his colleagues reports on the findings of the Managed Relocation Working Group, an interdisciplinary group of scientists, researchers, and policymakers whose goals were to examine the conditions that might justify the use of managed relocation and to assess the research being conducted on the topic. The authors note that although traditional management strategies are not likely to address the effects of climate change adequately, guidelines and protocols for managed relocation are poorly developed. "Developing a functional policy framework for managed relocation is a grand challenge for conservation," they assert.