A study conducted on the Indian star tortoise by the scientific name Geochelone elegans spread across India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka has recently made a revelation that is conflicting with the ideals of translocation.
Apart from the instances of reckless trafficking in the area and destruction of its habitat, the species is facing its gloom because of a shrinking genetic diversity pool.
What apparently troubles are actually their genuine concerns around prevalent unscientific translocations resulting in genetic mixing (or weakening) between different populations.
Segregation at the genetic level becomes difficult in an available population.
What is specie translocation?
A translocation of a species is defined as “the intentional movement of organisms from one site to another in order to be released”. Therefore, it can help in restoring a species to an area it had earlier disappeared from.
This has been used as an effective ‘conservation tool’ for cases where wild populations of a specie have either become scarce or increasingly dispersed and are towards being endangered but as the process involves dealing with complexities of nature, the results can vary.
But it is to be noted that not all species tend to respond to these measures in good spirits and may experience natural as well as anthropogenic difficulties limiting the very capability of these species to find new home.
The most recent case had been the India’s endeavor to relocate African Cheetahs to Kuno National Park of India.
The Indian action plan has been to bring-in at least 50 cheetahs in next 10 years.
And hence, this plan attracted criticism too.
An inherent character of these free-ranging wild-spirited organisms is their existence in very low population densities i.e., around 1 per 100 sq. km with rather large territorial ranges.
There is no example in the world where such a sort of unfenced cheetah introduction has proven effective.
Nevertheless, another study by the National University of Singapore states the red junglefowl (earlier jungle version of chicken) to be losing its genetic diversity simply because of an interbreeding with the domesticated ones.
Depending on their location, the wild ones now have inherited 20 to 50 percent of their genomes from their domestic counterparts and consequently require efforts to protect its pure genome.
Outcomes of conservation translocations? Can it be made better?
It has been found that these translocations cannot only bolster the vitality of these troubled species but also strengthen ecosystem resilience and biodiversity linkages.
These erstwhile perilous species play alternative and replacement keystone roles in their new habitats and help sustain the trophic interactions in their immediate surroundings.
This sort of habitat modification is what is an expected outcome. But various other things tend to happen alongside in a journey for population persistence.
Biological perspectives: the success or failure of this conservation technique entirely depends on the number of translocated individuals, the distances being covered, the containment strategies being used, competition within the habitat etc.
Social perspectives: the opportunity cost involved, feasibility of the project, threats to human populations because of subsequent ecosystem changes etc.
And hence, the reason why experts suggest the views of the people under impact to be recorded before such a process.
This tacit entry can be most effective with intensive genetic screening of the species’ individuals in the wild as well as caged (before being released), follow the guidelines updated by conservation organizations like CITES, IUCN, CMS, WWF, etc. to preserve genetic information.
The impact of climate change on genetic pool:
There has been greater amplitude of researches central to the idea of climate change’s impact on biodiversity but so far, only a little research has claimed its centrality on genetic connectivity, describing a relationship that the climate stability and genetic divergence share.
With the warming world introducing abnormalities around, many species are on the verge of existence in their own habitats, that too coupled with lower abilities to trace preferred climates and habitat disintegration.
This devoid these vulnerable populations of their natural right to migrate resulting in contraction of their destined area.
And this consequent reduction in species distribution, as per the study with accelerating climate will lead to a substantial loss of genetic connectivity.
The more extreme future climatic scenarios, the more would be the loss of genetic variability of species and lesser variation means more chances of extinction.
This unintentional fragmentation of genetic clusters of a species will challenge its own adaptation to an upcoming future because of a considerable loss of their basic evolutionary potential.
All this falls like a domino and reduces the species’ population viability and genetic flow. The final string in the series would be a genetic drift that may cause genetic variations within individuals of a species to vanish completely.
For instance, China hosts one of the most diverse temperate flora and fauna of the world, nearly 8 percent of which are endemic to the region.
Similarly, the western ghats in India harbors beautiful tropical rainforests and as per UNESCO, holds great level of endemicity i.e., nearly 54 percent of its tree species are only found in the same and nowhere else.
But both of these Asiatic hotspots are highly sensitive to global warming, seriously impacting the species (most of which are endemic and only found here) genetic diversity, distribution and above all, survivability.
On top of it, anthropogenic reasons continue to accelerate this ongoing degradation.
With this human aid, nearly 40 percent of Chinese serene ecosystems have been degraded severely and its 15-20 percent species being highly threatened. Similarly, between 1920 and 2013, approximately 35.3 percent of the forest cover got lost in the Western Ghats.
The case is not just with these sole regions, but there are varied streaks of changes happening around the globe, decapitating lives and livelihoods in every corner.
The Living Planet Report for the year 2022 published by World Wide Fund for Wildlife (WWF) has calculated 69 percent of the wildlife on an average to have declined in the past 5 decades.
The onus lies on human capability to win this race against the odds!