2026 / Climate, Conservation, Ecosystem services, Wildfires

At the Leading Edge: Advancing and Bridging the Science and Management of Range-Shifting Species

Citation

Comte, L., Weiskopf, S. R., Thompson, L. M., Valler, J. B., Rubenstein, M. A., O’Hara, C. C., Bamzai-Dodson, A., Lynch, A. J., Clark-Wolf, T. J., Couriot, O., Dobrowski, S. Z., Figueroa, L. L., Filippelli, G. M., Johnson, H. E., Meade, K., Lawler, J. J., Moeller, D. A., Parks, S. A., Parsons, E. W., … Carter, S. (2026, July 14). At the leading edge: advancing and bridging the science and management of range-shifting species. BioScience. doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biag088

Link to file

Climate-driven shifts in where species live are changing ecosystems around the world and creating big challenges for conservation and resource managers. As plants and animals move into new areas or leave others, ecosystems change in ways that affect both nature and people. Managers must deal with complicated ecological changes while also working within different laws, policies, and local values.

Even though this topic is getting more attention, important gaps remain. Managers still need a better understanding of what causes range shifts, clearer evidence on which climate-adaptation actions actually work, and research that fits the real-world institutional and social settings where decisions are made.

Some core challenges are how to connect processes that operate at different sizes and speeds — linking local, regional, and global patterns — and how to match the geographic scope of scientific knowledge with the practical scales where management happens. Making progress will require larger and more consistent datasets across species and regions, stronger cooperation across political boundaries, and decision tools that explicitly handle uncertainty and weigh different social and ecological values.

Filling these gaps is critical for turning research into practical guidance and for helping managers successfully respond to the redistribution of species.

Abstract

Climate-mediated shifts in species distributions are reshaping ecosystems worldwide, creating major challenges for conservation and resource management. These range shifts have far-reaching ecological and socio-economic consequences, requiring managers to address complex ecological dynamics while navigating diverse regulatory and value systems. Despite growing attention, key gaps remain in supporting management, from improved understanding of the mechanisms of range shifts, to evaluating the effectiveness of climate adaptation strategies, and tailoring science to the institutional and social contexts of decision-making. Central challenges include scaling processes across space, time, and organizational levels, and reconciling mismatches between biogeographical and management scales. Progress will depend on more comprehensive datasets to assess outcomes across taxa and regions, stronger cross-jurisdictional cooperation, and decision frameworks that integrate uncertainty alongside multiple value systems. Addressing these gaps is essential to make research more actionable and to enable successful management of species redistribution.