1/28 Paper 1: M. Soulé and R. Noss 1998 Rewilding and Biodiversity: Complementary Goals for Continental Conservation. Wild Earth. Soulé and Noss present traditional Biodiversity conservation and #Rewilding as two ideas that are both needed to stop the loss of biodiversity.

The full paper can be found here: https://t.co/mMtu8EiNds

The authors finish up by saying that livestock biodiversity has clear intrinsic value as cultural and social assets well as economic value as a genetic resource. There are many areas in Europe where full rewilding is not accepted but traditional livestock breeds may be. 11/11

Breed choices for trophic rewilding will be more restricted as hardiness is most important, but that it could still be fairly wide due to persistence of such populations 10/

They say that the Chillingham study is the first published example of multiple conservation benefits coming from a plant-herbivore system operating in a cultural and historic landscape. 9/

The authors then go on to discuss their research. They saw that although the Chillingham cattle and their habitat are quite unique, their results are transferable to understand impacts of large herbivores and the genetic understanding of inbreeding 8/

The authors looked at changes in plant indicator species, of which there are 23 species for semi-improved grassland and 38 of lowland dry acid grassland. 7/

The cattle had population dynamic records from 1945 to 2017 that included calves born, sexes, and adult survival. 6/

The authors monitored vegetation using an approach that later became the Countryside Vegetation System. The vegetation was found to be mainly infertile, relatively species-rich grassland. In 2008 it was resurveyed and biodiversity was found to have declined 5/

The herd has gone through several changes in population status. With periods of population growth, fluctuation, rapid increase, and levelling off. Currently the herd numbers are being influence by increased culling 4/

Chillingham park is in Northern England.and has had a herd of horned cattle possibly since before records began in 1646. This breed is genetically distinct and have a special official status. 3/

The authors start by explaining that cattle are used in many European countries to restore floral and faunal diversity. At the Chillingham estate are a herd of cattle known as wild cattle but descended from husbanded stock 2/

Today we're looking at using cattle for restoring and maintaining holarctic landscapes in a paper that concludes a long-term study in northern England 1/ #rewilding #rewildingscience

The authors also looked at abundance of floodplain plant taxa, where the grass Cynodon dactylon was by far the most abundant. 7/

The large mammal community exhibited a high degree of interspecific overlap in the plant taxa utilised. Diet composition differed significantly across feeding guilds, although there was considerable cross-guild overlap 6/

Their results showed that waterbuck and impala had the greatest among-individual dietary variability. Mixed feeders had the greatest population niche widths, grazer and browser species were interspersed across the spectrum 5/

The authors use faecal DNA metabarcoding to assess diet composition for large mammals. The study was done in Gorongosa, a 4000 km2 national park in Mozambique. Prewar it was dominated by large-bodied grazers, but since its restoration mid-sized ungulates have proliferated 4/

Although the trophic ecology of large herbivores is well studied in Africa, area that aren't protected or have unstable histories are less studied, and areas that are recovering from severe perturbations are also lacking in research 3/

The authors start by explaining that large mammalian herbivore populations have declined in recent decades throughout Africa and their restoring them has become a key conservation goal 2/

Today we're looking at tropic effects of large herbivores in a paper that looks at reassembling of herbivore assemblages in Africa 1/ #rewilding #rewildingscience

The full paper can be found here: https://t.co/oMFBIA6CPC