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Pleistocene rewilding is the conservation and ecosystem management practice of reintroducing Pleistocene megafauna or their close ecological equivalents to areas within their former ranges. It is a form of the conservation practice of rewilding.[1]
Towards the end of the Pleistocene era, most terrestrial megafauna on earth went extinct, in what has been referred to as the Quaternary extinction event.[2] With the loss of large herbivores and predator species, niches important for ecosystem functioning were left unoccupied.[3] Many megafauna are ecosystem engineers, shaping ecosystems at the landscape scale, and the species lost in the quaternary extinction event had a disproportionately large ecological impact. [4][5]
Proponents of Pleistocene rewilding argue that it could restore ecosystem function and improve resilience. In some systems, it has also been advocated for as a potential method of climate change mitigation, thus functioning as a form of bio-geoengineering.
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- ^ Rubenstein, D.R.; D.I. Rubenstein; P.W. Sherman; T.A. Gavin (2006). "Pleistocene Park: Does re-wilding North America represent sound conservation for the 21st century?" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 21 June 2007. Retrieved 28 July 2008.
- ^ Koch, Paul L.; Barnosky, Anthony D. (2006-12-01). "Late Quaternary Extinctions: State of the Debate". Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics. 37 (1): 215–250. doi:10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.34.011802.132415. ISSN 1543-592X.
- ^ Janzen, Daniel H.; Paul S. Martin (1982-01-01). "Neotropical Anachronisms: The Fruits the Gomphotheres Ate". Science. 215 (4528): 19–27. Bibcode:1982Sci...215...19J. doi:10.1126/science.215.4528.19. PMID 17790450. S2CID 19296719. Archived from the original on 13 May 2020. Retrieved 8 January 2020.
- ^ Johnson, C.N. (2009-07-22). "Ecological consequences of Late Quaternary extinctions of megafauna". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 276 (1667): 2509–2519. doi:10.1098/rspb.2008.1921. ISSN 0962-8452. PMC 2684593. PMID 19324773.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: PMC format (link) - ^ Fricke, Evan C.; Hsieh, Chia; Middleton, Owen; Gorczynski, Daniel; Cappello, Caroline D.; Sanisidro, Oscar; Rowan, John; Svenning, Jens-Christian; Beaudrot, Lydia (2022-08-26). "Collapse of terrestrial mammal food webs since the Late Pleistocene". Science. 377 (6609): 1008–1011. doi:10.1126/science.abn4012. ISSN 0036-8075.