Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, South Kensington, London, SW7 5BD, UK.
Conservation and Policy, Zoological Society of London, Regent's Park, London, NW1 4RY, UK.
Trends Ecol Evol. 2020 Oct;35(10):919-926. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2020.06.010. Epub 2020 Jul 7.
One of the most striking human impacts on global biodiversity is the ongoing depletion of large vertebrates from terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Recent work suggests this loss of megafauna can affect processes at biome or Earth system scales with potentially serious impacts on ecosystem structure and function, ecosystem services, and biogeochemical cycles. We argue that our contemporary approach to biodiversity conservation focuses on spatial scales that are too small to adequately address these impacts. We advocate a new global approach to address this conservation gap, which must enable megafaunal populations to recover to functionally relevant densities. We conclude that re-establishing biome and Earth system functions needs to become an urgent global priority for conservation science and policy.
人类活动对全球生物多样性的影响十分显著，其中包括对陆地和水生生态系统中的大型脊椎动物的持续消耗。最近的研究表明，巨型动物的消失可能会影响生物群落或地球系统尺度上的过程，对生态系统结构和功能、生态系统服务以及生物地球化学循环产生潜在的严重影响。我们认为，当前的生物多样性保护方法侧重于空间尺度，而这些空间尺度太小，无法充分解决这些影响。我们提倡采取一种新的全球方法来解决这一保护差距，这需要使大型动物种群恢复到具有功能相关性的密度。我们的结论是，恢复生物群落和地球系统功能需要成为保护科学和政策的紧急全球优先事项。
