> That seems like pure nonsense and perhaps a way to market their goofy experiment to gullible journalists.
Grasslands evolved in symbiotic relationships with the animals that tread on them, just as in any other part of the biosphere. As long as the wooly mammoth population is kept in check by humans, since they are not introducing mammoth predators, they will aerate the ground, eat and spread seeds, and provide essential elements and minerals to the soil as a natural part of their excretion processes. It will also have knock-on effects as insects regain access to dung, and that will feed the birds, and the birds and their eggs will become food for other animals, and so on.
It's a lot easier to restore ecology that existed 10-20 thousand years ago than to wait millions of years for another set of species to maximize the biological output of a given area. Rewilding is based on solid science and is thankfully here to stay.
Grasslands evolved in symbiotic relationships with the animals that tread on them, just as in any other part of the biosphere. As long as the wooly mammoth population is kept in check by humans, since they are not introducing mammoth predators, they will aerate the ground, eat and spread seeds, and provide essential elements and minerals to the soil as a natural part of their excretion processes. It will also have knock-on effects as insects regain access to dung, and that will feed the birds, and the birds and their eggs will become food for other animals, and so on.
It's a lot easier to restore ecology that existed 10-20 thousand years ago than to wait millions of years for another set of species to maximize the biological output of a given area. Rewilding is based on solid science and is thankfully here to stay.