Wildlife Recovery Leads to Capture of 6.4B Tons Carbon Dioxide, Study Shows

A recent study suggests that successful wildlife recovery could result in 6.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide being captured.

According to a recent study led by a professor from Yale School of the Environment Oastler, who specializes in Population and Community Ecology, Oswald Schmitz, protecting wildlife around the world could significantly improve natural storage and capture of carbon by boosting ecosystem carbon sinks.

Wildlife Recovery, Rewilding, Conservation

Nine wildlife species were looked at in the study, which was co-authored by a team of 15 scientists from eight different nations. Along with whales, this also includes sharks, gray wolves, African forest elephants, wildebeest, sea otters, American bison, and musk oxen.

According to the data, safeguarding or re-establishing their populations could help increase carbon dioxide capture by 6.41 billion tons annually. The Paris Agreement's goal of removing ample carbon from the atmosphere to maintain global warming under the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold will be met at 95% of what is required annually.

Schmitz claims that wildlife species are the connecting element between biodiversity and climate because of how they interact with the environment.

Rewilding or recovery, he continued, could be one of the best nature-based solutions to the climate that is currently available to mankind.

Schmitz's research has demonstrated that wild animals are important regulators of the carbon cycle in terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems through a variety of processes like foraging, disturbance, nutrient deposition, organic carbon deposition, as well as seed dispersal. With or without animals, there are significant differences in the trends of carbon capture and storage.

According to the study, putting animal populations in danger to the point where they go extinct could turn the ecosystems they live in from carbon sinks to carbon sources. According to a 2022 CBS News article, the global wildlife populations have decreased by nearly 69% over the past 50 years.

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Capture of Carbon Dioxide

The study demonstrates that addressing the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis are not distinct problems, and the authors argue that the restoration of wildlife populations should be a part of any natural climate solutions. Animating the carbon cycle involves rewilding animal populations to improve natural carbon capture and storage.

The authors list several other species that have a high potential for extinction around the globe, including the African buffalo, white rhinos, dingos, pumas, Old and New World primates, harbor and gray seals, hornbills, and fruit bats, as well as loggerhead and green turtles.

The study finds that natural climate options are essential for achieving the Paris Climate Agreement's objectives and providing additional opportunities to improve biodiversity conservation.

If current opportunities to protect and quickly recover species populations, as well as the functional integrity of landscapes and seascapes, are taken advantage of, broadening climate options to include animals can help reduce the time horizon over which 500 gigatons of carbon dioxide are captured from the atmosphere.

Animals present opportunities to expand the scope and variety of ecosystems that can be used to help keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, but ignoring them results in missed opportunities, PhysOrg reports.

The study by Schmitz and several colleagues was recently published in the journal Nature Climate Change.