Building Biodiversity Resilience with Assisted Migration: Intervention with Hawaii’s Cyanea superba

Abrupt climate change poses an existential threat to many species that cannot adapt quickly enough or migrate to cope with the changes in their environment. The cumulative effect on biodiversity could be catastrophic. Species adapted to niche, isolated micro-climates are particularly vulnerable as they cannot migrate to more suitable climates alone. Assisted migration, or the physical relocation of species to newly developing and more suitable climatic regions, has been proposed as a potential method to prevent rapid declines in biodiversity. This paper describes the potential use of assisted migration with the endangered Hawaiian plant species Cyanea superba. This paper describes the current status of the species and the potential for assisted migration to reduce its vulnerability to abrupt climate change. The potential benefits and risks are identified through a literature review of previous assisted migration efforts with different species, and the lessons are applied to create a plan for the assisted migration of Cyanea superba. The potential use of assisted migration for Cyanea superba informs a discussion on the potential systematic use of this method to prevent biodiversity collapse more generally. This paper shows that the use of assisted migration is likely to prevent the loss of Cyanea superba in the wild and that the benefits of the method far outweigh the potential risks.