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 shortscreen on Friday October 30 2015, @05:09AM
Uh huh. And since we haven't run out of oil yet, I guess it's safe to assume we will never run out of oil?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Friday October 30 2015, @07:39AM
You might be right, and for exactly the same reason.
As we move to Electric and renewables, the demand for oil will drop. Same with farm land. Modern crops and farming methods are so efficient we don't have to use marginal lands.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Friday October 30 2015, @08:46AM
Hehe, that's not what I was getting at. But I think you are forgetting that modern farming is highly dependent on petroleum. So this is two things together which are of questionable sustainability. Meanwhile, California is irrigating the desert, and Climate Change could turn out to be a thing.