Course:CONS200/2025WT2/Bring back Manny the Mammoth

Introduction

This project will investigate the causes and effects of megafauna extinctions, such as mammoths, from British Columbia at the end of the Pleistocene. A prominent causation theory for this extinction is the changing climate as the planet transitioned from a glacial to interglacial state at the end of the Pleistocene (Nogués-Bravo et al. 2008). A changing climate allowed humans to expand their range and target vulnerable mammoth populations in decreased ranges, escalating the rate of extinction. The loss of mammoths, a keystone species in North America, triggered a wave of ecosystem collapse, lowering the carrying capacity of other species (Haynes, 2010). This historical evidence will be used to analyze modern threats, consequences and solutions to biodiversity loss in British Columbia. Human impacts on species made vulnerable by climate change have drastically increased since the end of the Pleistocene but the study of this wave of extinctions may provide insight into current conservation challenges. The project will also research the effects of more recent eradications of large carnivores from British Columbia on ecosystems. Lastly,the project will investigate debates and benefits regarding rewilding; the process of returning ecosystems to their natural state by decreasing human interference (Issues Brief, 2021).

The province of British Columbia is the most biodiverse areas in Canada, as well as the entire world. The region comprises a range of topography, such as various coastlines, mountain ranges, and arid regions, as well as a long (and recent) glacial history. As a result of this variety, tens of thousands of species call this land home. With such a large number of species, one may assume thatthe loss of one or two can not make much of a large-scale difference, but this has proved to be untrue.

The decline of large mammals in British Columbia ties into a complicated discussion regarding major social and ecological implications. Climate change from human activities has significantly reduced populations of these keystone species, in turn disrupting entire ecosystems. By studying the loss of important mammals in British Columbia, important lessons can be learned about the fragility of ecosystem balances, the consequences of poor land use methods, and the lack of strong conservation strategies. Understanding these lessons is crucial for shaping future conservation efforts for the province as well as the rest of the world.

Mammoths in Northern Spain during the Ice Age

Include the scope/scale of the problem, intensity/frequency/severity of negative impacts, variables influencing those impacts and any other relevant information needed for understanding the issue.

Historical Extinctions

The Woolly Mammoth

The exact cause of the woolly mammoth’s extinction is highly debated. During the Holocene, the warming climate (from natural changes in Earth’s orbital patterns and greenhouse gas fluctuations) led to habitat loss and a reduction of food availability, making survival for this large, cold-adapted species difficult. On the other hand, overhunting by humans could have also been a key driver of the mammoth’s decline. However, mammoths had previously survived other warming periods, and their preference for climate conditions did not vary significantly as different populations lived in climates with a temperature range from -30.3 ℃ to 14.5 ℃ , indicating that temperature shifts alone did not cause their extinction. As suitable habitats shrank towards the end of the Pleistocene, mammoth populations were already in decline, making them more vulnerable to even minimal amounts of hunting by humans. At the same time, hunting increased, which is likely what caused the final disappearance of woolly mammoths from British Columbia.  

Causes of Extinction

Environmental Changes

Climate Change

There are several factors within climate change that could result in extinction of species.

Change in temperature by exceeding physiological tolerances, as well as reducing time for breeding and increasing the need for increased metabolic demand for oxygen while reducing the oxygen content of the water. As a result, increasing or decreasing global temperature results in great harm to global biodiversity, as well as the likelihood of extinctions.  

Secondly, decreasing precipitation may lead directly to water stress, death and extinction, as well as loss of habitat for freshwater species and increased risks of severe wet/dry cycles resulting in flooding and drought.

Fire Regimes and Land Change

Land change can also be affected by the dying out of large mammals, like large herbivores. Conducting palaeoecological studies suggests that extinct megafauna once maintained vegetation openness, and in wooded landscapes created mosaics of different structural types of vegetation with high habitat and species diversity.

Land change and extinction of megafauna also changed fire regimes of the vegetated areas, as these habitats reverted to more dense and uniform formation, due to increased fire frequency due to accumulation of uncropped plant material. The affects of large herbivores vary, but can result in the reduction of vegetation, helping with species coexistence and dispersing seeds, as well as reducing the risk of fires by preventing dry plant detritus from building up. By removing large herbivore, the likelihood of fires due to accumulations of dry material increases, resulting in a changed fire regime within the area.

Following the extinction of megafauna and large herbivores, burning increased several hundred years after, suggesting that plant biomass that had been consumed by herbivores before the extinctions was consumed by fire afterwards, after an interval of increased accumulation of fuel.

Human Based Causations

Hunting

Columbian mammoth hunted by Paleoamericans

Hunting resulted in large extinctions of megafauna, including mammoths; ground sloths; giant kangaroos; moa; and many others

Impacts on Surviving Species

Plants which were left behind when megafauna became extinct continued to grow obsolete adaptations in order to thwart grazers and browsers which no longer existed.

Impacts

Describe your analysis and evaluation of additional solutions and recommendations from a technical, social, cultural, economic, financial, political and/or legal points of view (not all of these categories will be relevant to all situations);

Land Dynamic Changes

Landscapes are dynamic systems shaped by the interactions of climate, vegetation, and animal activity. The extinction of mammoths triggered colossal ecological changes throughout landscapes by eliminating key agents of disturbance and ecosystem maintenance.  These large herbivores were keystone species, as they enhanced biodiversity at the patch level by preventing woody regeneration and shrub encroachment in grasslands.. This ultimately lowered carrying capacity for non-migratory grazers, reducing the number of organisms an environment can sustainably support . Additionally, their heavy physicality (weight: > 1000 pounds) compacted snow through trampling, wallowing and digging, thus maintaining water sources like ponds and mineral licks, which became more susceptible to infilling with sediment after their disappearance, leading to a decline in available surface water . Their loss led to habitat changes—such as increased shrub growth and fewer open grasslands—which made the land less suitable for other grazing animals. This resulted in fewer available resources like general food and water for many species reliant on mammoths to engineer land systems, ultimately limiting the populations of species that depended on those conditions. The loss of these ecosystem engineers set off irreparable cascading effects that reshaped floral and faunal communities, illustrating how mega-mammal extinctions functioned as ecological catastrophes with long-term consequences for landscape dynamics .

Teratornis (extinct Teratornis merri-ami), a scavenger species that depended on mega-mammal carcass for food supply.

Species-Species Interactions

The decline in mammoth populations led to the disappearance of a wide range of species reliant on their ecological role, further disrupting essential processes in nutrient cycling, food web, and decomposition. Many insect species, including dung beetles, relied on the dung of large herbivores like mammoths as a food source and a breeding ground, as their larvae feed on the dung once hatched. When mammoths went extinct, the availability of their dung diminished, leading to a dramatic reduction in the food supply for these insects, thus causing their populations to collapse or disappear entirely. The loss of mammoths as seed dispersers also caused shifts in plant distributions . Additionally, scavengers and predators that depended on mega-mammal carcasses, such as carnivorous mammals like dire wolves, bird species like condors, and arthropods, faced severe declines due to the loss of a vital food supply .

Policies and Solutions

Policy and Community Involvement

Aichi Biodiversity Targets

The current solutions to curbing extinctions and biodiversity loss are not sufficient to meet the Aichi Biodiversity Targets . Part of this is due to the fact that “current conservation research focuses on identifying and prioritizing high-risk species and regions rather than urgently solving the causes of biodiversity loss,” and while a band-aid solution can help to reduce biodiversity loss, not addressing the root cause will only result in more losses. However, by branching out to other disciplines, and making conservation a multi-disciplinary area, the chances of finding realistic and viable solutions increase.

Furthermore, in order to find solutions for biodiversity loss and protection, as well as conservation, Indigenous people must be involved. One such solution includes “braiding endangered species law and Indigenous rights [which]  will help countries uphold the rights of Indigenous peoples, prevent species extinction, and ultimately provide benefits to society at large.

Indigenous Involvement

Importance

The ability of Indigenous people to mitigate biodiversity loss cannot be understated. Through ownership of forested lands, Indigenous people contribute to forest carbon sequestration, emphasizing the importance of "of Indigenous stewardship for sustainable forest management and global climate stability." Furthermore, "biodiversity decline is significantly lower on Indigenous Peoples’ lands than in other areas across the globe," meaning that extinctions are also less likely on Indigenous land as the decline is reduced.

The effects of colonialism, including land-use change, has resulted in the continued violations of Indigenous rights, such as harvest, occurring at a higher abundance than the focus of present endangered species laws, which are centred around achieving minimum viable populations, which are not fulfilling culturally significant quantities.

Implications

The involvement of Indigenous people is important as often decline of biodiversity is reduced, partially as a result of land use systems promoting "three notable features vital for sustainability: high levels of biodiversity, socioecological resilience, and stable stewardship over long periods, including "patterns of spatial and temporal resource rotation and landscape management, incorporated within socio-cosmologies that value and promote biodiversity."

However, Indigenous people are also more severely implicated when biodiversity declines. Biodiversity decline and conservation efforts, including recovery efforts, "demonstrate continued inequities in biodiversity conservation policies when involving species that are culturally significant.

Furthermore, traditionally conservationists have defined “wilderness as the U.S. Wilderness Act of 1964 does: “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammelled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain,” perpetuating fortress conservation practices, and creating massive negative implications for Indigenous people's who have been from “areas designated for conservation protection due to the mentality that they need to be “bordered and guarded to keep wildlife in and unwanted humans out.

The negative implications for Indigenous people who are using or living on the land from conservation and attempted protection of biodiverse areas means that “conservation has become the number one threat to indigenous territories, due to the perhaps well-meaning attempt to protect land ultimately resulting in fortress conservation and the pushing out of Indigenous peoples from their territories.

The involvement of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and other organizations can be incredibly beneficial to preventing extinctions and protecting biodiversity, however key stakeholders like Indigenous people receive virtually no funding from international funding agencies, instead going ot the largest conservation organizations and local conservation NGOs. As a result, those who have the highest stakes and have the greatest influence in sustainable stewardship are excluded from monetary decisions and therefore lose out on the opportunity to make decisions surrounding the lands they live on and maintain.

Rewilding Debates

Scientific process: extraction and splicing of mammoth DNA to artificially inseminate modern Asian elephant species.

Conclusion

You should conclude your Wiki paper by summarizing the topic, or some aspect of the topic.

References

Please use the Wikipedia reference style. Provide a citation for every sentence, statement, thought, or bit of data not your own, giving the author, year, AND page. For dictionary references for English-language terms, I strongly recommend you use the Oxford English Dictionary. You can reference foreign-language sources but please also provide translations into English in the reference list.

Note: Before writing your wiki article on the UBC Wiki, it may be helpful to review the tips in Wikipedia: Writing better articles.

This conservation resource was created by Course:CONS200.