SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 1) by tftp on Friday October 30 2015, @05:29AM
Note that intensive use of smaller area of land to produce more food requires... more fertilizer, and more pesticides, and more GMO plants. If you want to go back to organic farming you will need far more land because it is not as efficient.
Note also that plenty of land is described as agricultural, but it is not used because of lack of water. Take California's Central Valley, for example. Few large animals will survive on mice and snakes - and there is not much else.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday October 30 2015, @07:43AM
If you want to go back to organic farming
Where did you get that idea?
More fertilizer, maybe. More pesticides? That trend is reversing too. and more GMO plants
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Friday October 30 2015, @07:02PM
Well, I don't pretend to know what you personally want :-) It was a rhetorical device. However there is a natural limit to the amount of fertilizers, Roundup, and other chemistry that you can put into the plants (and the cattle.) Here is a quote from The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu:
One cannot push for restoration of the biosphere (large wild animals) with one hand, and at the same time with the other hand feed themselves with chemicals. It does not make sense. I dare say that the needs of humans should be placed above the needs of animals.
More pesticides? That trend is reversing too.
Not to my knowledge. More and more Roundup is being poured onto the plants - in part because the weeds are evolving [ecowatch.com] to like it. Who would have guessed?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday October 30 2015, @07:39PM
Roundup is not "poured" onto the plants.
Its usually applied before planting.
And the amount used [geneticliteracyproject.org] is probably far less than your most conservative estimates.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Friday October 30 2015, @08:22PM
And the amount used is probably far less than your most conservative estimates.
Herbicides, including the Round-Up, are sold at Home Depot. They are used in significant quantities. I used them myself. A "1/3 of a drop per square foot" will do nothing. Maybe it will kill one blade of grass. There is a reason why they are sold in gallon-sized containers with a sprayer. It's not because so many homeowners have a lawn that you need a helicopter to cross.
If you look at the specs [homedepot.com], 1.33 gal is good for only 400 sq. feet. That is far closer to the size of a common lawn. If you do the arithmetic, it becomes 12.5 ml per square foot. Here are a few MSDS [roundup.com.au], and they do not declare the material harmless.
There are many application instructions [monsanto.com] from Monsanto on the Internet. Farmers use less material per acre (1-2 liters per acre,) however they are spraying concentrate that they are diluting before spraying. But in the end it doesn't matter what units we use to quantify the application, gallons or drops - all that matters is the effect. So far Roundup seems to work, but as I said nobody can tell if that will remain so a few years down the road. If it fails... now what?