Associated Press. (2020, August 10). Bison, Wild Horses Bring Biodiversity to Ex-Army Base. Retrieved August 23, 2020, from https://www.voanews.com/science-health/bison-wild-horses-bring-biodiversity-ex-army-base
In Europe animals like, bison, wild horses, and other big-hoofed roamed in the wild, however, now they are being brought to a military base in hopes to improve biodiversity. The director of European Wildlife said that the animals will be helping biodiversity by only eating invasive plants while living on the base with other animals. This experiment ended up working out much better then they had predicted and that animals could take steps to preserve nature not just humans.
This article conveys the actions that animals took part in to help biodiversity, by giving the endangered plants a change to grow and come back. As a result they started to see flowers flourishing and a special butterfly had been seen there for the first time since 1967. If it was proved in this experiment that when you give nature a chance and space it can help many things come back to life. Overall, although this process took some effort and time it was far worth it for our environment and the endangered species located in that area and now they can take this technique and use it in other areas to bring back species non artificially.
Lyndsey, I completely agree that this story is an encouraging example of how introducing a species to an area has a wide variety of benefits on the nature and biodiversity formerly existing in the spot, therefore connecting this to environmental science as we see the importance of biodiversity. However, I am wondering if you think there is any risk of this method having negative impacts in certain circumstances if the introduced animals do not behave as expected?
Thank you for reading this Julia! That is a very good question, I just when back to the article but no risks were mentioned however, I do think there has to be some risks.
In agree that it is good to introduce species which can improve the ecosystem. I am interested in whether or not the species being introduced has to be native since introducing a non-native species could have a potentially negative impact. Do you think that the introduced animals could become invasive species if they are not native?
Yes good point, I could totally see that happening, and thank you for reading this and asking a follow-up question!