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New research shows that the loss of large animals has had strong effects on ecosystem functions, and that reintroducing large animal faunas may restore biodiverse ecosystems.
Rewilding is gaining a lot of interest as an alternative conservation and land management approach in recent years, but remains controversial. It is increasingly clear that Earth harbored rich faunas of large animals -- such as elephants, wild horses and big cats -- pretty much everywhere, but that these have starkly declined with the spread of humans across the world -- a decline that continues in many areas.
A range of studies now show that these losses have had strong effects on ecosystem functions, and a prominent strain of rewilding, trophic rewilding, focuses on restoring large animal faunas and their top-down food-web effects to promote self-regulating biodiverse ecosystems.
Science for a wilder Anthropocene: Synthesis and future directions for trophic rewilding research (full PDF)
takyon: Pleistocene Park: Return of the Mammoth's Ecosystem (2005)
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Friday October 30 2015, @04:33AM
Or letting the regeneration of many near extinct wild animals such as wolves, cougars and coyotes we provide a means of thinning the overpopulation of humans. Already here in Central California we have cougars and coyotes moving into populated areas. Many smaller pets (dogs and cats) disappear regularly. It is only a matter of time till humans, especially small children also start to disappear. Now Grey Wolves have reappeared in northern California and are moving south. That is the reason that these animals have been hunted to near extinction. People removed a danger to themselves and and their children, also to their domestic animals that helped people to farm and provided food and clothing. I have seen coyotes as big as a German Shepherd wandering in parks and crossing streets near my home. How long before they begin hunting prey near schools and playgrounds?
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--