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Bouncing Back
The success of wildlife conservation efforts is measured in decades, if not centuries. Some may argue that the regenerative efforts undertaken by wildlife conservationists are not complete until ecosystems have reverted back to their pre-human states. However, a combination of stringent wildlife protection laws and efforts to restore habitats have led to several species making it back from the brink of extinction.
What leads to species going extinct, and what leads to their revival? The following articles published on National Geographic’s website take a closer look at wild animal species that have come back from extinction in the wild, or critically endangered with numbers too low to sustain a population naturally.
“How these threatened animals could bounce back” - an Earth Day Special, 2020
This photo essay describes briefly what the state of an animal was before conservation efforts began, and where the conservation efforts have landed the species. Some, like the Sumatran Rhino, have benefited from captive breeding programs. Animals such as the grizzly bear, on the other hand, benefited from the reservation of wild areas as “grizzly territory”, and the protection of the animal and it’s food source in the wild. The animals listed in this article exemplify the benefits of conservation efforts in the real world, and how human intervention may benefit species headed towards extinction.
“Learn how species that faced extinction are bouncing back” - October 2019
This infographic shows the status of a few selected species at a glance, focusing on their numbers in the wild (as individuals or breeding pairs), threats to their survival (such as habitat destruction, unsustainable human hunting or invasive species) and a short note on what is being done to restore their numbers. The graph of the animal’s decline and subsequent “rebound” shows how effective the conservation efforts have been.
Each of these programs has important take-aways, whether about the efficacy of a particular methodology of conservation, or of the challenges faced by conservation practices in the wild.
In Issue #9, we were introduced to the concept of rewilding as a large-scale, new-age conservation effort, the primary reading material about the conservation of species in India, where the “rewilding” strategy focused more on introduction, habitat creation, and captive breeding programs. The more radical Dutch conservation strategies employed at Oostvaardersplassen (OVP) and other conservation zones were talked about briefly. In this issue, we take up the Dutch rewilding system as our main focus, and talk more about what this kind of rewilding does for an ecosystem.
You can head over to the original Rewilding issue for a refresher on the concepts we will be talking about in this issue.
[An Article]
Welcome to The Pleistocene Park
An article by Ross Anderson in The Atlantic, April 2017
This article is a 50 MINUTE read.
Tap on the title to access the article.
The article begins, rather dramatically, with a man called Nikita Zimov driving a miniature-tank-like vehicle into a tree, and having it mow over some other small trees. While razing young evergreen trees (yes, those photosynthesizing carbon sinks), Nikita was possibly doing more to slow a warming climate than most clean-energy tycoons are.
We have, in multiple issues of this newsletter, spoken about grasslands and sustainable livestock management, using herbivores to graze, trample and fertilize perennial grasslands in Africa, Europe, or the Americas. The Pleistocene Park is an experiment of a similar kind, but taking things a step further: they want to introduce lab-grown, de-extinct woolly mammoths to the ecosystem.
The introduction of the lab-grown mammoths is more than a decade away, but for now, the ecological vacancy is partially filled by the miniature tank captained by Nikita. The “mammoth steppe”, as the ecosystem was called, ranged across Eurasia and Northern America during the Last Glacial Maximum (some 25,000 years ago). This was by far one of the largest nearly-congruent ecosystems to exist in recent times, on a geological time-scale. In this period, mammoths functioned much like savanna elephants do today - large herds traversing the landscape, uprooting trees and shrubs - forest vegetation that threatens the grassland. By ensuring that the majority of the land was relatively flat or gently undulating with soft-stem vegetation like grasses and herbaceous plants, the mammoths helped the ice sheets and glaciers grow towards the equator. Evergreen forests in these areas would have acted as black-body, absorbing and radiating heat into the ice sheets, melting them. Thus, the mammoths performed the gargantuan task of thermoregulating the earth’s climate system.
The advent of Homo sapiens into the northern regions of Eurasia, and later America, led to the decline of several giant mammals, including mammoths, bison and wisent, mega-herbivores that performed the extremely important function of maintaining grassland ecosystems.
Pleistocene Park is the brainchild of Sergey Zimov (Nikita’s father, who takes credit for nudging Nikita towards managing this ecosystem). Sergey began this multigenerational experiment by adding megafauna (primarily large herbivores) to the arctic ecosystem where it seemed like the majority of the megafauna had gone extinct. He added bison, musk ox, and Yakutian horses, along with other herbivorous grazers. Eventually, he plans to add carnivores as well. Until the de-extinct woolly mammoths are brought onto the steppe, however, the job of pushing back unnatural forest growth will be entirely up to human ecosystem managers (and their tanks).
This article is an extensive description of the origins and philosophy driving this project, as well as a thorough run-down of the science behind the seemingly counter-productive activities carried out in the Park. This is possibly one of the most engaging articles about this particular rewilding experiment.
[A Documentary]
Mammoth
A documentary short by Grant Slater on Vimeo
This is a 25 MINUTE long documentary.
Tap on the title to access the link.
This documentary, also about the Pleistocene Park, focuses more on Sergey Zimov’s vision, and it is a great way to visualize everything described in the article. In fact, the documentary is embedded into the article itself.
The documentary begins with the elder Zimov describing his vision of the siberian landscape, one dominated by fuzzy specks of Yakutian horses roaming about in a savannah-like setting. Of course, at the core of his vision is an army of “a hundred mammoth” (and enough money to feed them).
As the documentary goes on, Nikita, the next generation of Zimov, explains that creating the Pleistocene Park is beyond the fun science-fiction-like idea of creating a park full of de-extinct creatures. The mammoth steppe might be among our most important tool in curtailing runaway feedback loops that are exacerbating the melting of the arctic and sub-arctic ice sheets.
Framed like (and with somewhat the same information as) the article linked above, this documentary can definitely give you a bite-sized understanding of why we should definitely be experimenting with rewilding at this scale (and with this intent).
[Further Reading]
Pleistocene Park: Return of the Mammoth’s Ecosystem
An article about the Pleistocene rewilding experiment published in Science, Vol 308, Issue 5723, May 06, 2005.
This is a far more technical article than the one in The Atlantic; it has been coauthored by Sergey Zimov himself. He writes about the historical and geographical context of the rewilding experiment, putting together prehistoric climate and ecological data and explaining in great detail the role of Pleistocene megafauna in regulating the earth’s temperature.
He writes about the effects of the temperature fluctuations during the Holocene (our current epoch) on the steppe ecosystems and how this affected the herbivores of the time. He explains the geological and ecological impacts of the extinctions during this period, and why it is important to attempt to bring the megafauna back to this region. Although it is highly technical, it is also extremely comprehensible to the layperson.
Not to mention the fact that this entire project, and everything written about it seems like the plot of a blockbuster sci-fi movie, when it is a real, actual ecosystem that you can visit.
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