Collapse of the world’s largest herbivores

By W. Ripple, T. Newsome, C. Wolf, R. Dirzo, K. Everatt, M. Galetti, M. Hayward, G. Kerley, Taal Levi, P. Lindsey and 6 more. Science Advances, 2015

1,097 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The collapsing populations of large herbivores will have extensive ecological and social consequences. Large wild herbivores are crucial to ecosystems and human societies. We highlight the 74 largest terrestrial herbivore species on Earth (body mass ≥100 kg), the threats they face, their important and often overlooked ecosystem effects, and the conservation efforts needed to save them and their predators from extinction. Large herbivores are generally facing dramatic population declines and range contractions, such that ~60% are threatened with extinction. Nearly all threatened species are in developing countries, where major threats include hunting, land-use change, and resource depression by livestock. Loss of large herbivores can have cascading effects on other species including large carnivores, scavengers, mesoherbivores, small mammals, and ecological processes involving vegetation, hydrology, nutrient cycling, and fire regimes. The rate of large herbivore decline suggests that ever-larger swaths of the world will soon lack many of the vital ecological services these animals provide, resulting in enormous ecological and social costs.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/df9028fb8d87b4d7f543325c5e419532065330c6

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Citations in the corpus

Vertebrates on the brink as indicators of biological annihilation and the sixth mass extinction (2020, neutral): “They occur mostly in heavily populated regions such as tropical Asia, where major ongoing biodiversity losses are well known (10, 13 – 15, 30, 46, 52, 53).”
Livestock grazing in protected areas and its effects on large mammals in the Hyrcanian forest, Iran (2018, background): “The paucity of information and conservation guidance is particularly evident at large scales, which is critical considering the spatial requirements of populations of these species (Ripple et al., 2015).”
Synthesizing the effects of large, wild herbivore exclusion on ecosystem function (2019, background): “…large wild herbivores are being impacted by global change worldwide, not all populations are declining: modern declines in hunting and predator populations, and shifts in climate and forage availability, have resulted in dramatic deer (and other game species) overabundance (Ripple et al., 2015).”
Food habits of the world's grey wolves (2016, background): “The results from North America and Europe support the assumption that grey wolves are obligate carnivores whose use of prey generally depends on the availability of wild ungulates (Paquet & Carbyn 2003).”