Researchers in the UK has come up with a surprising way to help tackle the climate crisis - reintroducing wolves to Scotland.
Wolf populations across Europe have faced a pretty tough few centuries. In the UK, this was sometimes at the request of the reigning monarch of the time. In England, Edward I, who reigned from 1272-1307, ordered the killing of all wolves within the country, though it would take until the reign of Henry VII (1485-1509) before wolves were extinct in England, says IFLScience.
"In Scotland, a wilder, more mountainous, sparsely populated country, wolves survived until the 17th century," says the UK Wolf Conservation Trust.
Without these predators, red deer in Scotland have flourished to such an extent that their population is now around 400,000 animals. This is a problem because they tend to eat young tree saplings, preventing tree growth. And the world needs trees.
“There is an increasing acknowledgement that the climate and biodiversity crises cannot be managed in isolation,” said Dominick Spracklen, a professor of biosphere-atmosphere interactions in the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds. “We need to look at the potential role of natural processes such as the reintroduction of species to recover our degraded ecosystems and these in turn can deliver co-benefits for climate and nature recovery.”
With wolves keeping the red deer population in check, native woodland could expand to take up 1.1 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, or roughly five percent of the United Kingdom’s carbon removal target for woodlands. EcoWatch reports that researchers estimate the presence of each wolf would result in an uptake of 6,702 tons of carbon each year, giving each of the predators a carbon valuation “worth” of £154,000 / $194,554.
The research is the first time wolf reintroduction’s potential impacts on woodland expansion and the resulting carbon storage have been assessed in the UK. According to the research team, the results are further evidence that large carnivores play an important role in providing essential nature-based solutions to address the climate crisis.
This analysis is remarkably similar to what has actually already been achieved in Yellowstone, where a recent study revealed the slow yet steady role - through 'trophic cascade' - that wolves played in bringing the ecosystem back into balance, all the way down the food chain, from elk populations to plants.