Managed Migration of Coast Redwoods: Subjectivity of Stakeholders in Oregon’s Land Use Planning Community

Abstract

The Earth's climate is changing at a faster pace than the slow natural adjustment rates of most species to their rapidly shifting habitat conditions, especially for long-lived tree species, such as the iconic coast redwood Sequoia sempersqvirens. This may leave some species stranded in less than optimal environments, resulting in population extinctions and/or the need for human-assisted migration. However, the implementation of assisted migration does not come without economic, legal, political, ecological, and ethical issues. One of the most important and complex social questions regarding assisted migration is that of the land use planning community in the area being considered. This article explores the subjective beliefs among these stakeholders regarding managed migration of coast redwood trees into suitable habitats in Oregon. Q-methodology was used to structure the complexity of participants' subjective beliefs into a few manageable themes to reveal broader socio-economic and environmental perspectives and shared ways of perceiving and valuing the relationship between social, economic, and environmental concerns. The findings of this study suggest two main factors 1) positively ranked values that align on new perspectives of utilitarian ecological values, and 2) positively ranked values that align on a land based communitarian perspective. This convergence suggests an ecologically aware land management ethos as opposed to the view of favoring human's dominion over nature, and therefore bolsters the potential for the future success of managed migration of coast redwoods into suitable habitats in Oregon given the state's existing land use policy.

Seeing the forest for more than the trees: aesthetic and contextual malleability of preferences for climate change adaptation strategies

“…For them, this was the adaptive strategy, and despite a desire to confront the impacts of climatic change, the respondent lacked contextual understanding about the speed at which a tree can migrate under changing climatic conditions. This statement assumes that oak trees have a high level of vagility (i.e., ability to move themselves across the landscape) which would be needed to migrate upward in elevation due to a changing climatic envelope of temperature and precipitation, when in fact their suitable range will shift faster than the trees can be naturally assisted; thus the trees may require human assisted migration efforts, if there is public support (Jenkins and Jenkins 2017). Respondents who received the text version of the survey for Site 10 were more likely to choose adaptive management given that the associated text provided further context about the need for assisted migration and the related balance between grazing and vegetation regeneration.…”