{"version":"1.0","provider_name":"2022 Archive of RENATURED, Marina Zurkow's Research Blog","provider_url":"https:\/\/o-matic.com\/blog-archive-2022","author_name":"Marina","author_url":"https:\/\/o-matic.com\/blog-archive-2022\/blog\/author\/admin\/","title":"Carnivores' give and take","html":"This is an editorial on the Rewilding Institute<\/a>'s web site by Dave Parsons:\r\n
What\u2019s the big deal about carnivores?<\/span> <\/span><\/strong>\r\n\r\nA large body of literature supports the conclusion that large carnivores are critical components of healthy and biologically diverse ecosystems.\u00a0 Large carnivores tend to promote plant and animal diversity and ecosystem complexity.\r\n\r\nTheir removal can unleash a cascade of effects and changes throughout all ecosystem trophic levels reducing biological diversity, simplifying ecosystem structure and function, and interfering with ecological processes.\u00a0 Their return to impoverished ecosystems can reverse the cascade and restore diversity and complexity to ecosystems.\r\n\r\nWe are witnessing such ecological rebirth in Yellowstone National Park following the return of the wolf to that ecosystem.\u00a0 Riparian willows and cottonwoods are returning because elk spend more time moving and hiding to avoid becoming wolf scat.\u00a0 With their table reset, beavers are returning to the streams.<\/span>\r\n\r\nThese \u201cecological engineers\u201d provide homes for myriad critters from aquatic insects to fish to songbirds.\u00a0 The extent of changes is certainly far more complex than we can observe or document.<\/span>\r\n\r\nThe critical role of carnivores kicks in when viable populations are allowed to persist at ecologically effective population densities over large areas\u2014really large areas.<\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\n\u201cAreas apparently needed to maintain viable populations [of large carnivores] over centuries are so large as to strain credibility; they certainly strain political acceptance.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 Noss et al. (1996:950)<\/blockquote>","type":"rich"}