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Empty Landscape Looms, If Large Herbivores Continue to Die Out 146

Posted by timothy from the slimming-diet dept.
From the BBC comes this depressing excerpt: Populations of some of the world's largest wild animals are dwindling, raising the threat of an "empty landscape", say scientists. About 60% of giant herbivores - plant-eaters - including rhinos, elephants and gorillas, are at risk of extinction, according to research. Analysis of 74 herbivore species, published in Science Advances, blamed poaching and habitat loss. A previous study of large carnivores showed similar declines. Prof William Ripple, of Oregon State University, led the research looking at herbivores weighing over 100kg, from the reindeer up to the African elephant. "This is the first time anyone has analysed all of these species as a whole," he said. "The process of declining animals is causing an empty landscape in the forest, savannah, grasslands and desert." Here's the study, published in Science Advances, on which the BBC article is based.
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Empty Landscape Looms, If Large Herbivores Continue to Die Out More

Empty Landscape Looms, If Large Herbivores Continue to Die Out

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  • Herbivores dying out? Not cows I hope! (Score:4, Funny)

    by HornWumpus ( 783565 ) on Sunday May 03, 2015 @03:45PM (#49607213)

    I'm going to have a nice steak, while they're still available. I hadn't heard how badly Herbivores are doing.

    Good thing whale populations are rebounding. It would suck not to be able to get a nice steak.

    • I'm sure what they are talking about is WILD animal herbivore populations, not domesticated herbivore populations. I think US populations have been decreasing slowly (probably an attempt to force prices up) but globally they're still increasing. I find it highly unlikely that there is any chance of a beef/pork/chicken die out unless purposely done or there is a global natural disaster (meteorite, supervolcano, etc).

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Perhaps whales can now move back to the land again. All those vacant grass areas, with all predators extinct.. Or perhaps rodents will grow to fill the place. We are going to have an evolutionary race between the giant marsupial and the giant snakes from the horror movies. They will be everywhere.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AqD ( 1885732 )

      We could save them all by farming rhinos, elephants and gorillas for food!

    • Why are Americans so obsessed with beef?

      • Probably because we have lots of open land which is required for beef production. I might also throw in the classic image of the cowboy. It isn't just the Americans, but also the Brazilians, and Argentinians who also seem to have a love of beef but they know how to make it into a social event. One of the funnest thing I have done was Brazilian BBQ with one of my friends and their family from Brazil when I was down there last year for vacation with my family.

  • Empty landscape my arse (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MrBigInThePants ( 624986 ) on Sunday May 03, 2015 @03:50PM (#49607237)
    It will be inevitably filled with humans... ...at least until we destroy ourselves...

    • Re:Empty landscape my arse (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NicBenjamin ( 2124018 ) on Sunday May 03, 2015 @07:56PM (#49608263)

      That's what happened here.

      What was the largest large mammal, that existed in high population densities, in most of the landmass of the lower 48 in 1850?

      Probably the Buffalo. There were others of course -- we had a presence everywhere, and high population density East of the Mississippi, there was a scattering of bears and other large carnivores, there are some pretty big herbivores as well -- but the one you'd have to mention is the Buffalo. Now there's very few Buffalo, and very very very many Home Sapiens.

      Same with most of the other large mammals. In Ohio or Michigan it's very unusual to see anything larger then a white-tail deer (lighter then us, averaging 100 lb.). Yeah you can find animals like Black Bears, or Moose, or Elk; but you really have to go looking for the damn things. Even in more rural/wild areas if you're just going down the highway the largest mammal you're likely to see is a fat guy whose having car trouble. The Ecosystem only has room for so many large mammals, and we crowd them out.

      Now what's the one region of the world where large herds of wild mammals (who are bigger then us) roam free? Africa, particularly Central and Southern Africa. What's the continent with both very low population density (Congo, for example, has a population comparable to Germany and land area comparable to Western Europe, it's northern neighbor has a population comparable to a third of the Paris Metro area and more land then all of France), and extreme population growth? Africa.

      So it's quite predictable that the Rhinos, Elephants, and Lions are under pressure. The people who live in Africa need the land for agriculture, and there's no cheap way to solve the problem of feeding said African people except destroying the ecosystem that supports those animals.

  • Whenever I hear prophecies of doom like this from any outlet I wait about 5-7 years before I even think about adopting it as something to look into with any seriousness, by then if there is still a hue and cry about the same thing there's the possibility it isn't total BS.

    • :START
      do {
          if(iJustHeardIt) lastHeard = now;
          sleep();
      } while(lastHeard(now-5years));

      if(problemStillExists) {
          sleep();
          grouseOnSlashdot();
          goto(START);
      }

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Wow. Sunday, and we already have a winner for the week's most non-sensical analogy.

    • This one you really don't have to wait.

      Africa's population is projected to double by 2050. that means they'll need either a) lots of great agricultural technology to double their yield per acre, or b) double the acres. If they're also improving their diets, they'll need meat, which means increasing the proportion of acres devoted to cattle, and cattle take up a lot more acres per calorie then wheat does. Every acre devoted to crops cannot be used by elephants/rhinoceri/etc. and has to be protected from elep

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ksheff ( 2406 )
        Hunting of these animals brings in money and meat for these communities, so they will protect the animals from poachers. That is why the areas that allow hunting are experiencing population growth for these animals (as opposed to where it is banned and the animals are considered to be pests by the people who live there). http://www.campfirezimbabwe.or... [campfirezimbabwe.org]

        • In the shorty term in some areas? Yup.

          Long term, for all areas?

          In the long-term there just isn't that big a market for foreign hunters(particularly since anyone who actually pays for this shit and gets outed on social media becomes a pariah in the US/Europe), and the acres per calorie is too high to accommodate double the population.

          What's gonna happen is that the local hunters will need more and more game to eat, so the animals will be under significant population pressure. Their families will need land to

  • humans... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03, 2015 @03:56PM (#49607257)

    We're smart enough to kill off everything else, but we're not smart enough not to.

  • Society as we know it is over.

    Have a nice steak, and maybe hold off on the children, Soylent Geen is our future.

    Goodbye...

    • Jokes about Cannibalism are funny . . . but when push comes to shove, humans don't taste good.

      If we did taste good, we would have eaten each other all up, before the Internet was invented for me to post this.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by kesuki ( 321456 )

        I disagree, blood is the most delicious food ever. i've licked enough nosebleeds and bit my tongue or cheeks or have had tooth removal blood.

      • People do not eat people because it really pisses other people off, and, unlike large herbivores, large crowds of angry people are going to ruin your day and take away any advantage that you got from eating them in the first place

        In cultures that do eat people they have customs that allow for it only if the 'person' they re going to eat had magical powers and was a witch of some sort, thereby accepted by the general population as not being a person any more

        In the long term eating people has disadvantages li

      • According to William Seabrook, who had more range of diet than many human meat eaters, it is pretty good and tastes like high quality veal.

                              http://www.smithsonianmag.com/... [smithsonianmag.com]

        • Only teenagers with helicopter parents taste like veal. Now you understand why there are so many of them.

  • human overpopulation (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ganjadude ( 952775 ) on Sunday May 03, 2015 @04:04PM (#49607293) Homepage
    The sad truth that no one will ever talk about is that there are way to many humans on the earth to ensure the rest of the animals are not brought to extinction. we need to cut the human population in half in the next 100 years (by breeding less, not killing people off) if we really want to sustain the earth

    • . we need to cut the human population in half in the next 100 years (by breeding less, not killing people off) if we really want to sustain the earth

      . . . and you are preaching to the Slashdot crowd about breeding less . . . ? Sorry, that doesn't sound very effective to me . . .

      Now, if you want to talk about killing people off, the folks here will be thrilled to serve you up unfeasible ideas about sharks with lasers, smothering with gamma ray enhanced testicles, and the like.

      The Human Species are one tough bad add mutha fucka . . . they ain't going away any time real soon . . . without an Armageddon fight.

      • we need to cut the human population in half in the next 100 years (by breeding less, not killing people off)

        Pretty sure the Nazis also tried forced sterilization. It did not turn out well.

        Otherwise if you wanted to see an ever stronger reaction than telling people you are going to kill a group of them off, then try to say you are now telling them who they can and cannot fuck.

        Or you could try a middle ground like China's "one child" policy, which leads to other disasters... [forbes.com]

        Or you know, you could try not tel

        • way to take what I said and twist it tighter than a twizler. I didnt say anything about forcing anything. people who are smart enough are already making the decision not to have kids (or only 1 and not 20) thats all I was getting at.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          WTF? All that has to be done is to make people relatively wealthy and they'll voluntarily slow down breeding. It has already happened in every developed country. The trick is to have a healthy enough society that most everyone has a share in the increasing wealth that technology has brought us and for society to adjust to a different type of growth.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrKaos ( 858439 )

        The Human Species are one tough bad add mutha fucka . . . they ain't going away any time real soon . . . without an Armageddon fight.

        I'm just curious, have you every been camping or in the bush for longer than a week? I think our parasites are much tougher than we are.

    • Re:human overpopulation (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Hartree ( 191324 ) on Sunday May 03, 2015 @04:20PM (#49607377)

      "no one will ever talk about is that there are way to many humans on the earth"

      You just proved yourself wrong. ;)

      Seriously, that gets brought up regularly. The problems start when you start considering "who" we need fewer of. People have a tendency to assume there will be fewer of the "other" people, but we'll keep the population of "good people like me".

      You can insert race, creed, political persuasion, amount of privilege as needed to fit the particular speaker.

      • it gets brought up here regularly. but no one who can actually make the right changes is talking about it. it would be political suicide

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by kenj123 ( 658721 )
        I'm afraid that when push come to shove, more people will always more care about shopping and upgrading their kitchen and driving a nicer car then they care about wild animals. You might be able to convince some people that there is tourist revenue possible from preserving nature, but I don't think it will work in the long run. real estate is just to valuable to let wild animals be wild animals.

      • Re:human overpopulation (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ranton ( 36917 ) on Sunday May 03, 2015 @08:59PM (#49608509)

        Seriously, that gets brought up regularly. The problems start when you start considering "who" we need fewer of. People have a tendency to assume there will be fewer of the "other" people, but we'll keep the population of "good people like me".

        Let's not pretend this is the only problem with lowering the global population. Let's also not pretend that any time a problem is not easily solved we should just give up on trying to solve it.

        It will be very hard to limit population growth, but without some major breakthroughs in science we may not have any choice. Most likely the people on the short end of the stick will be the ones with the least wealth, just like everything else in life.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Daetrin ( 576516 )
        "Seriously, that gets brought up regularly. The problems start when you start considering 'who' we need fewer of. People have a tendency to assume there will be fewer of the 'other' people, but we'll keep the population of 'good people like me'."

        The solution is "simple". We just need to make the entire world prosperous, make birth control freely available, and convince major religions to stop preaching that more children is a good thing. Given all three (and in some cases even just two out of the three) p

    • Why limit your methods to the slowest one available if the problem is urgent?

    • We'd need some form of extreme socialism to do that (support such an old population).

    • Re:human overpopulation (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Sunday May 03, 2015 @05:41PM (#49607713)

      Keep in mind the problem species mentioned are mostly native to Africa, and it's problematic in more ways than one. Africa is the world's poorest and least developed continent, and that leads to two problems: First, their birth rate is skill sky high, unlike nearly every first-world country where populations are now largely stable or even falling. Second, the poverty and unstable political climate means there's a lot of poaching going on. Third, when you're dirt poor, you're a little less likely to worry about "big picture" issues like species viability, and more likely to do what you can to simply survive and put food on the table.

      Essentially, we need Africa to become more economically developed as soon as possible, and when that happens, it's almost certain that they'll follow the same trends that we've seen in happen in other developed countries: stabilizing populations and more serious efforts to protect their natural resources and environment. Unfortunately, we can only encourage these countries to protect their natural assets, but there's really nothing we can do short of that. We just have to hope that the populations don't become nonviable before that happens.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by 0123456 ( 636235 )

        Don't worry. All the Africans are moving to Europe right now, and Europe already exterminated most of its large indigenous herbivores.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )

        Essentially, we need Africa to become more economically developed as soon as possible, and when that happens, it's almost certain that they'll follow the same trends that we've seen in happen in other developed countries: stabilizing populations and more serious efforts to protect their natural resources and environment. Unfortunately, we can only encourage these countries to protect their natural assets, but there's really nothing we can do short of that.

        1. Well large land animals are an important source of tourism. Tourism is a huge source of income for many poor countries in Africa, like for example it's 12% of the GDP in Kenya. Most governments want to protect them and is willing to accept aid, it's individuals that want to poach them for personal gain. Which basically means they'll take funding, equipment, personnel, anything you're willing to give really. Granted, they'll probably not care so much about CO2 emissions or whatever. Then again, neither do

    • The sad truth that no one will ever talk about is that there are way to many humans on the earth to ensure the rest of the animals are not brought to extinction. we need to cut the human population in half in the next 100 years (by breeding less, not killing people off) if we really want to sustain the earth

      A few points here:

      1. We are eventually going to end up with too many humans of course, but we are can manage just fine with 7 billion. The alarmist faction here is woefully misinformed--population density maps show that there is plenty of physical living space and despite the hysterical rants of organic food nutjobs--who are, whether they realize it or not, advocating a return to extremely inefficient and environmentally damaging forms of food production--the fact is food supply is not a problem at all.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by MrKaos ( 858439 )

      The sad truth that no one will ever talk about is that there are way to many humans on the earth to ensure the rest of the animals are not brought to extinction. we need to cut the human population in half in the next 100 years (by breeding less, not killing people off) if we really want to sustain the earth

      This will occur anyway with the radionuclide releases from the Fukushima accident. That will reduce the birthrate because as more of the radio isotopes get into the food chain and water table more and more pregnancies will fail.

    • I think that the number of humans will naturally decline. The birth rate in the US has been below the replacement rate since the '70s (expect for a year or two right before the '08 financial crisis). The same is true in every industrialized country, and there's no sign of that changing. The economic benefit of having kids is simply much lower in modern economies.

      It'll be interesting to see what increasing automation does to population levels. I have the feeling that a lot of jobs will go poof due to automat

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      we need to cut the human population in half in the next 100 years (by breeding less, not killing people off)

      Unfortunately, war is the more politically palatable solution among the two.

  • Large herbivores were doomed from the start (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03, 2015 @04:11PM (#49607329)

    This has been going on for tens of thousands of years, so while it matters, it isn't news.

    Large size makes animals evolutionarily fragile and is often a dead end.
    They say, during the K-T event, no land animal larger than a cat survived.

    • I'm waiting for someone to blame this latest on global climate change, GMO crops, the evil Americans, etc., instead of realizing that species have come and gone since the earliest days of life on earth.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by itzly ( 3699663 )

        So, species come and go without cause ? Like magic ?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Species come and go, the problem is that the rate they "go" has been winning by a considerable margin for the last few thousand years (and appears to be accelerating in the last few centuries). We're sitting the middle of the Holocene extinction event. Human activity is largely responsible. This isn't news.

    • This has been going on for tens of thousands of years, so while it matters, it isn't news.

      Large size makes animals evolutionarily fragile and is often a dead end. They say, during the K-T event, no land animal larger than a cat survived.

      Yes and it's no big deal either because it's not like it will take thousands of years for new species will evolve to replace the ones we kill off. The interesting thing is that while animals can sometimes wreck the ecosystem that supports them they aren't aware of the consequences of what they are doing. Humans on the other hand are fully aware of the fact that they are heading for a disaster due to heir behaviour but they still don't change their behaviour because they can't live without the short term ben

    • Re:Large herbivores were doomed from the start (Score:4, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Sunday May 03, 2015 @07:00PM (#49608019) Homepage Journal

      Err... really? Sixty million American Bison disappeared from the Great Plains because they were big? Then why did the passenger pigeon over the same period go from the most numerous bird in the world to extinct? It's true that the largest baleen whale -- the Blue Whale, is listed as "threatened"; but the smallest baleen whale, the pygmy right whale is either extinct or very close to it.

      It's not as simple as big == headed for extinction. Sometimes bigness is a factor in extinction, sometimes it's a factor in survival.

  • Barren Landscapes. Related. Depressing. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bmo ( 77928 ) on Sunday May 03, 2015 @04:40PM (#49607477)

    Copypasta from FARK. Slightly cleaned up for formatting.

    Rik01 4 hours ago
    Folks have heard me biatch about changes in my own city in the State of Florida -- and changes in the State itself. Basically the response has been (1) progress old man, (2) change the onion on your belt, (3) yelling at clouds, (4) who cares -- it's Floraduh!

    However, these changes have been going on in other states.

    I've watched politicians promise Eco-improvements with one hand and sell the voters down the river with the other. [For example] We had a massive oyster bed in the Indian River placed off limits to the public for preservation and ecological reasons for close to 20 years. That thing had huge oysters in it and the water in its cove was nearly crystal clear. The local police arrested scores of people sneaking down there to poach oysters and the shores were dotted with piles of empty shells. The cove was absolutely packed with the things, no river bottom exposed. Then, during the Housing Boom, an upscale development went it around it. Since the cove was too shallow for wealthy owners to park their boats at the planned docks behind the cove-side homes, it was dredged. No warning to anyone who wanted to get these delicious oysters. Dredges came in, ripped thousands of them out and disposed of them. The cove is now full of dark water and few oysters, making a lot of folks like myself wonder why we preserved them.

    Water use in the state has quadrupled. Florida used to be very swampy, but the water table was shallow. Now, after sucking so much out and changing the lay of the land, plus paving over every square inch they could, we're the capitol of the US when it comes to sink holes. Water shortages began to pop up years ago, where before, we never had any.

    Millions of acres of wild woods have been developed, endangering a host of native species of animals we used to have and the amount of fish in the rivers has diminished to the point that you need a license and a fishing season for Mullet -- once so plentiful that it was considered 'garbage fish' and caught mainly for bait. Within the last 40 years, the Indian River has to be closed to shellfish harvesting and fishing periodically during the summer because of massive human fecal bacteria contamination.

    The previously crystal clear air of my seaside town now shows signs of grey pollution. They stopped dump burning ages ago, along with burning huge piles of used tires. Land clearing agencies have to use these massive air blowers that surround burn pits to burn stumps and brush with, creating a hotter, less smoke making fires. However, the local traffic, even with more eco-friendly cars, has quadrupled and quadrupled again. Their lesser pollution has, by the sheer weight of volume, has surpassed that which was present in times of less pollution control, when you used to have 'smokers' rolling down the roads.

    Major advertising campaigns have convinced the public that instead of one or two cars per family, everyone except the dog needs one, plus a couple of ATVs, a boat and a couple of those fast, small watercraft good for nothing except going fast on the water and making a lot of noise. Prior to that, dirt bikes were the thing, tearing up thousands of acres of wild woods and chasing out local animals for fun. To round things out for the macho man, we have air boats, running on aircraft engines, no mufflers, tearing up the diminishing acres of wild swamps and annoying the crap out of neighbors when the owners 'test' them in their yards.

    We have fewer forest fires than when I was a kid, thanks to sophisticated fire equipment -- but then again, the acres of undeveloped woods has fallen by 3/4, so there's less to burn. Where lightening would hit decades old pine trees and forest floors thick with dry pine needles, it hits houses, paved streets, power poles and grassy lawns.

    My yard has an 'old growth' pine in it. Around 60 feet tall and nearly three feet around. It was 6 feet tall when we moved in around 1958. Across the street used to be a

  • What about small animals? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Last time I checked, small animals existed. What about those?
    Won't they just grow in numbers to fill the space?
    More food available + less larger predators = fun times for all the little creatures.

    Large animals are overrated. Including us. They all have their time. And they all eventually die off due to unsustainable growth.

    We are, ironically enough, not smart enough to curb our own growth. In fact, China was about the only country to literally write in to law a limitation of growth and the majority of

  • We killed just about all of the bison in North America in the 1870's. We killed them for their skins, and the cows that replace them taste good. We are poorer for it- the great plains are boring and nobody goes there for a safari. It will be an even greater loss if the same happens in Africa, because they still have the top predators that were lost in North America tens of thousands of years ago.

    But hey, fuck it, I want a burger.

  • Obligatory XKCD (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Gavagai80 ( 1275204 ) on Sunday May 03, 2015 @06:22PM (#49607869) Homepage

    https://xkcd.com/1338/ [xkcd.com]

  • where once again, the white man is going to come in and tell the black man what to do with his land.

    Yes. Yes, I know. It will be for his own good. He's too [stupid|short-sighted|ignorant|uneducated] to live his life correctly. The wise white man has to tell him what to do.

    Even when you dress it up in left-wing causes, racism is pretty ugly.

  • Your flatulence [whitehouse.gov] is destroying [ibtimes.com] our climate [independent.co.uk]. To the dinosaurs [dailymail.co.uk] with you, stinkers!

  • It's time to clone the Mammoth. We've waited long enough.

  • Easy solution: privatize them (Score:4, Interesting)

    by paulpach ( 798828 ) on Monday May 04, 2015 @08:42AM (#49611027)

    In 1900 there were only 20 white rhinos left; in 2010, there were 20,000.

    So what happened? we privatized them [perc.org].
    In fact take any animal that can be bought: chickens, horses, cows, etc..., and none of them are in any danger of extinction.

    Why this works? Well, suppose I owned those 20 white rhinos. Simple supply and demand would make them worth a fortune. I would have a very strong incentive to try to get 21, so I would make everything I could to make them reproduce. Eventually I would have enough rhinos that I will start selling some for profit and continue reproducing them. The people that buy them would also have a strong incentive to reproduce them. As supply continues to increase, the value of an individual rhino will fall. At that point, the animal is safe from extinction, and it may become more profitable to sell them to hunters for example.

    Simple market forces would make us breed them when there are too little, and hunt them when there are two many, keeping a sustainable population.

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