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Restore the lost ecological functions of people

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 2, pages 1050–1052 (2018)Cite this article

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Recent calls for the reintroduction of functionally important animal species are motivated by a desire to restore ecological function, but overlook the ecological roles performed by humans. Here, we consider humans in ecological context, exploring our roles in the maintenance and restoration of ecosystem function.

Declining biodiversity has motivated numerous strategies to arrest ecological degradation and restore ecosystems. Rewilding is among the most recent and ambitious, aiming to introduce keystone species that can reinstate ecological functions lost to extinction — such as herbivory, predation, seed dispersal and bioturbation — in order to restore ecosystems. Given that humans are the major cause of the global biodiversity crisis and affect even the most remote parts of the Earth, it is perhaps unsurprising that discussions about ecological restoration rarely acknowledge the missing ecological functions once performed by people. Yet this absence belies the reality that people have been functionally vital to many ecosystems across the globe for millennia, and that in many parts of the world, ecological degradation has arisen through the loss of people1,2.

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Fig. 1
Fig. 2: Ecological functions provided by people of the Western Desert, Australia.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Rebecca Bliege Bird

  2. Institute for Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University, Albury, New South Wales, Australia

    Dale Nimmo

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  1. Rebecca Bliege Bird
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  2. Dale Nimmo
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Correspondence to Rebecca Bliege Bird.

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Bliege Bird, R., Nimmo, D. Restore the lost ecological functions of people. Nat Ecol Evol 2, 1050–1052 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0576-5

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