Rewilding Is The Missing Link Between Biodiversity Conservation And Climate Change

Restoration and conservation of wild animals and their ecosystem roles are a key component of natural climate solutions that can enhance the ability to reduce climate warming beyond 1.5°C

© Copyright by GrrlScientist | hosted by Forbes

Unless you live in the state of denial, you’ve heard about climate change and you (hopefully) have a basic understanding of its causes and the harms it is creating. One aspect of reducing climate change is based on a controversial experimental technology, known as carbon capture and storage. But did you know there is a holistic ecosystem-based technology-free approach to enhancing carbon capture and storage?

This method: “wildlife conservation”.

Yes, indeed: a recent study found that protecting wildlife and restoring their populations around the world could supercharge ecosystem carbon sinks and thereby significantly enhance carbon capture and storage.

This study was conducted by an international group of 15 scientists from eight countries. They examined nine wildlife populations — marine fishes, whales, sharks, gray wolves, wildebeest, sea otters, musk oxen, African forest elephants, and American bison (Figure 1) — and discovered that protecting or restoring these animals’ populations could facilitate the capture of an additional 6.41 billion tons of CO₂ every year (6.41GtCO₂-eq/yr). This is comparable to the potential CO₂ emissions reductions from solar, wind, and carbon sequestration in agriculture. Further, this amount of carbon capture is 95% of what is needed every year to meet the Paris Agreement target needed to keep global warming below the 1.5°C threshold that most countries agreed to do.

According the study’s authors, other animals that could help increase carbon capture include such iconic species as the African buffalo, white rhino, puma, dingo, Old and New World primates, hornbills, fruit bats, harbor and gray seals, and marine turtles, particularly loggerhead and green turtles.

“Wildlife species, throughout their interaction with the environment, are the missing link between biodiversity and climate”, lead author, Oswald Schmitz, the Oastler Professor of Population and Community Ecology with the Yale University School of the Environment, said in a statement. Professor Schmitz’s expertise is understanding the link between two important components of natural systems: biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Rewilding animal populations for the purpose of enhancing carbon capture and storage is a technique known as “animating the carbon cycle” (ACC). Implementing an ACC approach along with The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) ecosystem protection and restoration measures could double the reduction of emissions mentioned in the ICPP report (2.8-4.0 GtCO2-eq/yr).

“This interaction means rewilding can be among the best nature-based climate solutions available to humankind”, Professor Schmitz said.

Of all the animals identified as playing important roles in carbon capture and storage, the study found that marine fish play a very significant role in facilitating the capture and storage of 5.5 GtCO2/yr.

“The importance of seriously considering this neglected part of the carbon cycle speaks for itself”, the authors note. “We need to look beyond the IPCC conclusion that simply ‘rebuilding overexploited or depleted fisheries reduces negative climate change impacts on fisheries’. Global fisheries management must take urgent responsibility to avoid negatively impacting the climate and the overall functioning and diversity of the ocean by rebuilding depleted fish stocks and implementing large no-take fishing zones both in territorial and High Seas waters.”

How do wild animals have this effect on the carbon cycle in terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems around the world? They accomplish this by simply living; by foraging, by disturbing their habitat, nutrient and organic carbon deposition, and through seed dispersal. The loss or absence of animals dramatically alters the dynamics of carbon uptake and storage.

Human actions and abuses over the past 50 years alone have reduced wildlife populations by almost 70%. If animal populations are allowed to go extinct, their absence could damage entire ecosystems by flipping them from a carbon sink to a carbon source — thereby creating even more carbon pollution than we already must somehow deal with. According to the study, solving the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis are tightly linked issues and restoration of animal populations must be included in nature-based climate solutions.

“Natural climate solutions are becoming fundamental to achieve the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, while creating added opportunity to enhance biodiversity conservation”, the authors write in their study (ref).

“Expanding climate solutions to include animals can help shorten the time horizon over which 500GtCO₂ is drawn out of the atmosphere, especially if current opportunities to protect and rapidly recover species populations and the functional intactness of landscapes and seascapes are seized on. To ignore animals leads to missed opportunities to enhance the scope, spatial extent, and range of ecosystems that can be enlisted to help hold climate warming to within 1.5 degrees Celsius.”

Source:

Oswald J. Schmitz, Magnus Sylvén, Trisha B. Atwood, Elisabeth S. Bakker, Fabio Berzaghi, Jedediah F. Brodie, Joris P. G. M. Cromsigt, Andrew B. Davies, Shawn J. Leroux, Frans J. Schepers, Felisa A. Smith, Sari Stark, Jens-Christian Svenning, Andrew Tilker & Henni Ylänne (2023). Perspective: Trophic rewilding can expand natural climate solutions, Nature Climate Change | doi:10.1038/s41558-023-01631-6

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