By Calley O’Neill

What an inspiring, exciting and uplifting TED talk by activist/journalist/man of great courage, George Monbiot, FOR MORE WONDER, REWILD THE WORLD.  No doubt you will be glad you invested 16 minutes to discover the wondrous effects of reintroducing a top predator into its natural wild ecosystem.  If you only have 4 minutes watch the mini-version, which gives you the whole scoop in an instant.

When wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park for the first time in over 70 years, magic happened.  It wasn’t so much from the deer they killed, deer that had overpopulated in spite of human control efforts.  The deer had devastated the vegetation over a huge area and the mere presence of the wolves completely changed their behavior.  The deer began to avoid the areas where they could be easily tracked, and the vegetation grew back… but that’s only the beginning of the story of how wolves change rivers and ecosystems, bringing health and life to a trophic cascade of plants, birds, animals and the forest.   

 Enjoy!

11 Mar This entry was published on March 11, 2014 at 4:24 pm and is filed under Biodiversity and Ecology ~ The Foundation of Life, Rama Good News for the Earth. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.