User:Neon.Frogs/Rewilding (conservation biology)

Rewilding and Climate Change

Rewilding is widely considered to have the potential to mitigate global climate change . Restoring megafauna is widely understood to have a positive impact in biodiversity, and may also increase public enthusiasm for biodiversity .

One rewilding effort specifically focused on mitigating global climate change is restoring Pleistocene megafauna. By restoring large herbivores, greenhouse gas levels may be lowered . Grazers may also reduce fire frequency by eating flammable brush, which would, in turn, lower greenhouse gas emissions, lower aerosol levels in the atmosphere, and alter the planet's albedo . Browsing and grazing also accelerates nutrient cycling, which may increase local plant productivity, and maintain ecosystem productivity specifically in grassy biomes . Megafauna also aid with carbon storage. In fact, the loss of megafauna that eat fruits may be responsible for up to 10% of lost carbon storage in forests .

Rewilding in the face of climate change.

Trophic rewilding as a climate change mitigation strategy.

Rewilding is the new Pandora's box in Conservation.

Rewilding should be central to global restoration efforts.

Rewilding Elements

Rewilding aims to restore three key ecological processes: trophic complexity, dispersal, and stochastic disturbances. **Deleted rest of paragraph**

Keystone species **Changed name**

Animals which interact strongly with the environment.

Main article: Keystone species

Ecosystem engineers **Made Sub-Heading 1**

Ground disrupting powerful animals that push over trees, trample shrubs and dig holes. These ensure that trees and grassland does not become dominant. One or more of a limited number of: elephants, bison, elk, cattle (as proxies for the extinct aurochs). These species also disperse seeds in their dung. Pig species originally wild boar, dig creating soil where new plants can grow.. Beavers are another important example of an ecosystem engineer. The dams they build create micro ecosystems that can be used as spawning beds for salmon and collect invertebrates for the salmon fry to feed on, they also create wetlands for plant, insect, and bird life.. **Added key info about beavers into here - deleted beaver subsection**

Predators

Are required to ensure that browsing and grazing animals are kept from over-breeding/over-feeding, destroying vegetation complexity. A lesson learnt from Oostvaardersplassen.For example: Eurasian lynx **deleted irrelevant info about lynx** or wolves.

Rewilding Locations

Both grassroots groups and major international conservation organizations have incorporated rewilding into projects to protect and restore large-scale core wilderness areas, corridors (or connectivity) between them, and apex predators, carnivores, or keystone species (species which interact strongly with the environment, such as elephant and beaver). Projects include the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative in North America (also known as Y2Y) and the European Green Belt, built along the former Iron Curtain, transboundary projects, including those in southern Africa funded by the Peace Parks Foundation, community-conservation projects, such as the wildlife conservancies of Namibia and Kenya, and projects organized around ecological restoration, including Gondwana Link, regrowing native bush in a hotspot of endemism in southwest Australia, and the Area de Conservacion Guanacaste, restoring dry tropical forest and rainforest in Costa Rica.

North America

A wildlife crossing structure on the Trans-Canada Highway in Banff National Park, Canada. Wildlife-friendly overpasses and underpasses have helped restore connectivity in the landscape for wolves, bears, elk, and other species.

Dam removal has led to the restoration of many river systems in the Pacific Northwest. This has been done in an effort to restore salmon populations specifically but with other species in mind. "These dam removals provide perhaps the best example of large-scale environmental remediation in the twenty-first century. This restoration, however, has occurred on a case-by-case basis, without a comprehensive plan. The result has been to put into motion ongoing rehabilitation efforts in four distinct river basins: the Elwha and White Salmon in Washington and the Sandy and Rogue in Oregon."

In North America, another major project aims to restore the prairie grasslands of the Great Plains. The American Prairie is reintroducing bison on private land in the Missouri Breaks region of north-central Montana, with the goal of creating a prairie preserve larger than Yellowstone National Park.

South America

In Tijuca National Park (Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil), two important seed dispersers, the red-humped agouti and the brown howler monkey, were reintroduced between years 2010 and 2017. The goal of the reintroductions was to restore seed dispersal interactions between seed dispersing animals and fleshy-fruited trees. The agoutis and howler monkeys interacted with several plant and dung beetle species. Before reintroductions, the national park did not have large or intermediate -sized seed dispersers, meaning that the increased dispersal of tree seeds following the reintroductions can have a large effect on forest regeneration in the national park. The Tijuca National Park is part of heavily fragmented Atlantic Forest, where there is potential to restore many more seed dispersal interactions if seed dispersing mammals and birds are reintroduced to forest patches where the tree species diversity remains high.

Australia

An organization called Rewilding Australia has formed which intends to restore various marsupials and other Australian animals which have been extirpated from the mainland, such as Eastern quolls and Tasmanian devils.

Europe

In 2011, the 'Rewilding Europe' initiative was established with the aim of rewilding one million hectares of land in ten areas including the western Iberian Peninsula, Velebit, the Carpathians and the Danube delta by 2020, mostly abandoned farmland among other identified candidate sites. The present project considers only species that are still present in Europe, such as the Iberian lynx, Eurasian lynx, grey wolf, European jackal, brown bear, chamois, Iberian ibex, European bison, red deer, griffon vulture, cinereous vulture, Egyptian vulture, great white pelican and horned viper, along with a few primitive breeds of domestic horse/Przewalski's horse and cattle as proxies for the extinct tarpan and aurochs. Since 2012, Rewilding Europe has been heavily involved in the Tauros Programme, which seeks to recreate the phenotype of the aurochs, the wild ancestors of domestic cattle by selectively breeding existing breeds of cattle. Many projects also employ domestic water buffalo as a grazing proxy for the extinct European water buffalo.

European Wildlife, established in 2008, advocates the establishment of a European Centre of Biodiversity at the German–Austrian–Czech borders.

Austria

In 2003 de Biosphärenpark Wienerwald was created in Austria. Within this area 37 kernzonen (core zones) covering 5,400 ha in total were designated areas free from human interference.

Britain/England

Since the 1980s, 8.5 million trees have been planted in the United Kingdom in an area of the Midlands around the villages of Moira and Donisthorpe, close to Leicester. The area is called The National Forest. Another, larger, reforestation project, aiming to plant 50 million trees is beginning in South Yorkshire, called The Northern Forest. Despite this, the UK government has been criticised for not achieving its tree planting goals. There have also been concerns of non-native tree planting disturbing the ecological integrity and processes of what would be a native habitat restoration.

Knepp Castle started rewilding in 2001 in West Sussex and Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation have overseen reintroductions of extinct bird species in the UK. Extremely rare species: common nightingale, turtle doves, peregrine falcons and purple emperor butterflies are breeding at Knepp and more common species populations increase.

Celtic Reptile & Amphibian is a limited company established in 2020, with the aim of reintroducing extinct species of reptile and amphibian to Britain, as part of rewilding schemes, such as the European pond turtle, moor frog, agile frog, common tree frog and pool frog. Success has already been achieved with the captive breeding of the moor frog.

In 2020, nature writer Melissa Harrison reported a significant increase in attitudes supportive of rewilding among the British public, with plans recently approved for the release of European bison, Eurasian elk, and great bustard in England, along with calls to rewild as much as 20% of the land in East Anglia, and even return apex predators to the UK, such as the Eurasian lynx, brown bear, and grey wolf. More recently, academic on rewilding in England has highlighted that support for rewilding is by no means universal. As in other countries, rewilding in England remains controversial to the extent that some of its more ambitious aims are being 'domesticated' both in a proactive attempt to make it less controversial and in reactive response to previous controversy

The Netherlands

Wild koniks in the Oostvaardersplassen reserve

In the 1980s, the Dutch government began introducing proxy species in the Oostvaardersplassen nature reserve, an area covering over 56 square kilometres (22 sq mi), in order to recreate a grassland ecology. Though not explicitly referred to as rewilding, nevertheless many of the goals and intentions of the project were in line with those of rewilding. The reserve is considered somewhat controversial due to the lack of predators and other native megafauna such as wolves, bears, lynx, elk, boar, and wisent. Between 800 and 1150 wild koniks live in the Oostvaardersplassen. The horses were reintroduced together with heck cattle and red deer to keep the landscape open by natural grazing. This provided habitat for geese who are key species in the wetlands of the area. The grazing of geese made it possible for reedbeds to remain and therefore conserved many protected birds species. This is a prime example how water and land ecosystems are connected and how reintroducing keystone species can conserve other protected species.

**Deleted all info about Bison Rewilding** - seems irrelevant -- if you delve that deeply into Bison, I want to see that same thing for a couple other species in order for it to make sense. Perhaps section - rewilding key species