Should we rebuild lost ecosystems through trophic rewilding?
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
There are many past ecosystems we could choose to attempt to restore. Certainly Yellowstone had its wolf population. But it also had a native human population, whose practices affected the ecosystem.
Do we want to "rewild" to before European settlement, so re-introduce Native American land clearing practices? That would certainly help restore the quaking aspen population. Remember, there was 11,000+ years of humans as one of the top predators in that ecosystem.
Or do we return it to pre-human habitation era at the end of the last ice age? That's what truly "wild" means, no?
Ars Technica appears to have forgotten. They write: "So when they disappear—largely because of us—there are myriad negative effects, culminating in a lack of biodiversity."
Who exactly is this "us"? It can't mean "humans".
To really rewild to pre-human times would call for a return of the megafauna like the American lion, the short-faced bear, and the other animals that disappeared some 11,000 years ago.
But that's not what most people mean when they talk about rewilding in the Yellowstone context.
This is an old debate in regards to artifacts. Should an old building be preserved? Restored to some earlier state? And if so, which state?
Even there, we use the word "restore" when it doesn't fully replicate the original structure. Eg, the older building probably contained old-growth wood and didn't have any power or running water, or was handicap accessible or met modern fire codes. It certainly didn't have the same isotopic composition, given how we've added petroleum-based carbon (less radioactive) and nuclear fallout to the building, and ecosystem.
Similarly, one might be restored to health, but it's not the same heath as before, if only because of increased age.
So I don't think that people mean to 'completely eliminate all human involvement' when they speak of rewilding, and I don't think that's how it's usually interpreted.
For example, this piece says "The best-known example of trophic rewilding was the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s." Since there is still all matter of human presence in the park, it can't mean that rewilding means to get rid of human involvement.
It's not clear what to use in its place for 'natural' areas, but perhaps it's sufficient to divide the world into 'non-industrialized' and 'industrialized' (in which I would classify agricultural and urbanization as industry, too)
Obviously the easiest (and probably safest) way to do that is to study earlier times where the biodiversity was higher in the specific environment, and see if you can identify some of the causes, which in many cases turn out to be the presence of apex predators.
That easy confusion is why I don't like the term "rewild".
BTW, just now I researched some of the history. http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/MES/rewilding.pdf from 1998, which Wikipedia's "Rewilding (conservation biology)" describes as a refinement of the idea, by conservation biologists Michael Soulé and Reed Noss, characterizes the two eras of human involvement in the North American continent; the megafauna extinction from 11,000 years ago, which killed off 50 species of large mammals large in North America, and the post-Columbus wave.
That ends with:
> Sooner or later it is necessary to find the resources to incorporate wilderness and the entire pre-Columbian set of carnivores and other keystone species into reserve designs. Absent these, the long-term success of the continental conservation network in North America is doubtful.
So it's goal is to restore the pre-Columbian era ecology, but says nothing about the involvement of the one species which defined the character of that ecology - humans - other than to argue that it should be minimized.
You commented, "which in many cases turn out to be the presence of apex predators." My point boils down to the observation that humans were one of the apex predators.
Yes, but did they increase or decrease the surrounding biodiversity?
Compared to before the Pleistocene? Humans decreased biodiversity.
But if rewilding is meant in the pre-Columbian sense, then the hypothetical would be to compare the ecology in the year 1400 had humans in the Americans died out in, say, the year 900.
We simply don't know the answer to that, that I know of in my limited understanding.
We do know that human fire practices change the landscape. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Yellowstone_Ecosystem#... mentions the decline of quaking aspen, and how one of the factors may be fire-return intervals. Humans have long used fire to clear out underbrush, but I really know so little of archaeology or related fields.
So in that case? Humans may have help prevent biodiversity reduction.
I can point towards Australia as an example of a longer-term ecosystem adaptation for human fire practices. The general belief is that "Burn-offs or small, cool fires were thought to be used by Aboriginal people both for hunting and for the prevention of larger fires" and "most Australian plants wouldn't be distributed around the country the way that they are now if people hadn't burned-off the land through history." - http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2010/12/aborigin...
That's not saying there was more or less biodiversity, only that there are different ecosystem patterns with and without human. But I don't see how it's possible to compare biodiversity when there's been 10,000+ or 50,000+ years of ecosystem adaption.
Is there less biodiversity in North and South America because of the Great American Interchange? Should pre-Panamanian land bridge be our goal once we've restored the Pleistocene era ecology? There had to be a goal besides "improved biodiversity." My goal, btw, is to point out that humans are part of the ecology.
We should not forget that, but the interesting question would be if introducing more humans into the environment _now_ would increase or decrease the biodiversity. There might be ways of living for humans that would increase the biodiversity around them (as you pointed out aborigines may have done in the past), but would anyone wish (or be capable of) living like that today?
If there is no realistic prospect that the introduction of more (of todays) humans into the environment will increase the biodiversity, then it might be better to focus on other factors that could help.
That's not the only possibility. We could re-create some of the aspects, like fire clearing, without actually living that lifestyle. We do part of that already though hunting licenses as proxy other predators. But more people will pay to hunt, or get involved in hunting, than setting fires. (Fire is an easy example, which is why I mention it. Park policies before the 1970s were to suppress all fires.)
If my (uneducated) view is right, that means accepting that there is a required base level of required involvement, in perpetuity, while the rewilding articles I've read suggest that involvement will go to zero.
BTW, after a lot of searching, I found a paper related to this topic. http://www.academia.edu/9495040/The_People_in_Yellowstone_Re... . Based on this snippet:
> Yet, what is omitted in these landscape descriptions, and what is too often overlooked in telling the story of Yellowstone, is the central ecological niche filled by humans.
I thought it would go into more of the actual ecology, but does no. It does describe how the Sheepeater history has been downplayed, and suggests that:
> Re-opening Yellowstone to full-time Native American presence would restore some justice to the history of the land as well as open up new opportunities to learn together about sustainable modes of living and stewarding the land in a cooperative way.
giving as examples "the Diné (Navajo) at Canyon de Chelly in the Grand Canyon and the Oglala Sioux in the Badlands."
http://www.amazon.com/Restoring-Presence-American-Yellowston... appears to also go into related details, but I don't know what.
So an answer to your question of who might live there, with limit on what they can do, might be the descendants of the Native Americans who were kicked out.
At this point I have no more to add. Thanks for the conversation!
"Wild me, Sandfella." (Logan's Run)
"She like to do the wild thing" (lyrics, Tone Loc)
Yeah, another term might be a good idea.
Why not emphasize ecological robustness in farming practices? Using ecology as the basis for designing food production systems promote biological diversity and resilience with the added benefit of healthy, clean food that doesn't harm the climate.