EcosystemEngineer

Forests can be a history lesson.
I found an old ploughed terrace on a wooded stream bank several years ago.
It was only accessible with a horse, so when the tractor took over it was abandoned and the trees moved in.

A map showing the probability of movement for terrestrial animals across Canada and the USA.

Now published: Landscape connectivity across Canada and the USA. A seamless, high resolution connectivity map across both countries. 🧪🌎 Open access in Facets, including open data www.facetsjournal.com/doi/full/10....

I've been looking at pastoralism as a way to create, increase and improve connectivity corridors via supervised ungulate migrations.

With some vegetation being difficult to travel through in the height of the growing season the acts of grazing and trampling can provide much better conditions.

Any type of mower is a (very) poor substitute for a real herbivore.

My guess with gorse is that a large herd of mega-herbivores on full stampede would have a more realistic impact.

What doesn't help is that vegetation structures are still pretty much under-researched

How do you grow a thousand-year-old tree without waiting a thousand years? As @interspecies.agency writes, ecologists are trying to build a kind of time machine, making younger trees acquire in decades the ecological richness that normally takes centuries. www.noemamag.com/how-to-build...

Pretty similar to some of my structural work, but I include the impacts of herbivores on the structure of the whole forest too.

Vegetation structures have a huge influence on animal and plant behaviours in similar ways that urban and political structures influence the behaviours of society.

When rewilders finally abandon the "stop eating meat because we want your land" strategy and move on to "Hello Mr. Farmer, can we borrow your cows, please?

That will be a good day for nature and everyone.

Pastoralists, foresters, livestock farmers and ecologists should all be working together.

Every single tree and plant should be visited by a herbivore at least once each year.

It's a good way evaluate the current state of things.

We need to meet with the herbivores once again to discuss options for migratory rewilding.

Grazed grasslands at Yorkshire Dale, England. CREDIT: Shangshi Liu

Will removing livestock from historically grazed grasslands increase the carbon these lands store in their soil? Maybe not. A study finds that un-grazed grasslands in the UK have lower levels of stable, mineral-associated carbon than grazed plots. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/M1fi50YbGvi

Livestock land is the only land where herbivores are well represented and while there is much scope for improvements in terms of management, a far bigger concern is all the non-livestock lands where herbivores are currently a statistical rarity.

When rewilding, holistic livestock farming and forestry eventually embrace pastoralism, then we'll begin to make some real progress at scale.

The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology | Wiley Online Library Pastoralism worldwide faces a complex landscape of increased pressures and exclusion. Beyond ecological and economic challenges, pastoralists suffer eroding cultural identity, limited generational re...

New paper describing the current state of Latin American pastoralism, trying to provide a global view, with the support and participation of the Pastoraméricas network. Glad to have contributed to it, Greta Semplici being the main author.

doi.org/10.1111/jlca...

Nice black soil under that old root system.
I wonder how it compares with the soils within a few metres from the tree, or futher out?

I bet some of the birds rushed in there for a feast of soil-life.

A large birch snag fallen with rotted root ball exposed. It has taken a smaller diameter hemlock tree with it.

The exposed rotted root ball of a large fallen birch tree.

4:30 a.m. I was awakened by a loud *CRACK* followed by a massive crash out in the woods. A large birch, which stood for maybe 100 years, has decided to lie down for a rest. No wind, no rain, but it was time. It's legacy will continue, as host to more life; fungi, insects, and salamanders. 1/2 +

Great graphic from @pewenvironment.bsky.social showing how road crossings work

One wildlife crossing can prevent 1,400 accidents over its lifetime, saving lives & billions of $, according to a Scioto Analysis report

Investing in these bridges + underpasses is a win-win for drivers and wildlife 🌰

We can reverse engineer the structural and dynamic features of vegetation and use wildlife responses as a means to evaluate them.

Variations of structural features can then be subject to precise and periodic grazing, browsing and trampling impacts to see how the structures perform.

Deep-Time Perspectives on Vegetation Ecology: Skjold Søndergaard Skjold Søndergaard discusses how long-term ecological processes inform contemporary approaches to vegetation restoration and biotic integrity.

Exciting first weeks at @oxfordecosystems.bsky.social & @naturerecovery.bsky.social at Oxford Uni.

Great discussions on vegetation dynamics & restoration baselines. Next up: presenting the Danish Nature Indicator, a tool for prioritizing rewilding!

www.oxfordecosystems.org/post/deep-ti...

When boar arrived in my part of Europe all the local small farms either stopped growing spuds, or had to erect electric fencing from the day of planting right up until harvest.

I don't think the "eat less meat, free up more land for nature" advocates quite realise this.

Most old growth forests show just as many signs of the dominant influence of man as everywhere else, you can see this from the structures.

This winter, we've been focusing on youth. Building youth confidence with fishing, crafting, hunting, and meat processing is a part of what we do – what Buffalo bring with them.

Here are a couple of snapshots from the last couple of months.

📷 Jeremy Molt, Education and Culture Coordinator

It's really not that different from growing monocrops, or being slaves to the economy that puts all of society in an invisible cage.

What's weird is when we only notice one example and not all the others.

Today I've participated in my first meeting as a Board member of
@biogeography.bsky.social
Members gave me the responsability of bringing more global south voices to the society and I'll do my best to accomplish that 🏔🏝

That's much needed and long overdue.

The biggest issue I see is the dominant influence of man on vegetation structures, most of which now barely function.

We have everything we need to make big improvements and most of this can be achieved with very little funding.

Date confirmed!!!!

Register here to attend: us06web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Migrating herbivores once had access to all vegetation, but the migrations are now only found in rangelands and a few other places that are pin-pricks on a world map.

If our ecosystems are to ever function properly again we need a massive expansion of land under migration.

Pastoralism can do this

This month, in our #RangelandMyths series, we examine the myth that 'Mobility drives conflict and insecurity'.

Read the think piece by Linda Pappagallo: repairproject.org/Blog/myth-mo...

Join our online discussion on 26 February with @tekgw.bsky.social:

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/exploring-...

Science also needs to be open to being challenged on issues relating to the boundaries and especially on some of the evaluations and proposals that have been made so far.

The Eat-Lancet diet is one such example, but there are others.

A new episode of #InsideBiodiversity has just been released.

Prof. Katrin Böhning-Gaese, @ufz.de, speaks about the Planetary Boundaries framework, considering it from both scientific and communication perspectives.

🎧 Subscribe now: insidebiodiversity.podigee.io