Stuart Pimm, Nicholas School, Duke University

Prof. Stuart Pimm here discusses conservation and assisted migration.

Interview Questions:

  • 0:07: Can you tell us a bit about your work with Saving Species?
  • 1:56: Some think that migration corridors will never be sufficient to address the novel ecosystems that will arise after climate change. Can you speak to this?
  • 3:39: How do you do that in the instance of a species like the pika, which will effectively be abandoned on a sky island?
  • 4:16: Do you think that managed relocation might be a better strategy for a species like the pika?
  • 5:15: What does successful assisted migration look like? How will we know if we’ve been successful?
  • 6:12: Do you think that [saving individual species] functions as a buffer against uncertainty? That seems to be how Leopold understood it.
  • 6:56: Migration corridors would seem to benefit animals more than plants. Do you think they’ll be useful to flora as well?
  • 9:04: It’s true that plants migrate too, but they don’t migrate particularly quickly. Given the shorter time horizon of climate change, are you still optimistic?
  • 9:30: Are you concerned at all about Western technologies or attitudes about conservation interfereing with local, indigenous communities?