COP16 Dispatch: Week 1 Wild Animals, Unsung Heroes of Carbon Storage, Ecosystem Services, and Nature Restoration.

By Claire Bandet, master’s student at the University of Pennsylvania

This panel convened to discuss how focusing our attention on wild animals, particularly capstone and indicator species, is a useful paradigm for considering restoration and conservation priorities. Speakers called this “animating the carbon cycle.” The following is a summary of the arguments made by each organization.

One. Yale School of the Environment

Animals are generally presumed to have little impact on climate because of their relatively small biomass…but no, they have enormous climate impact as a function of feedback effects and biophysical features. Targeted conservation or rewilding of key species can help mitigate climate change. Herbivores in tundra ecosystems (caribou, reindeer, and musk ox) keep shrubs down by foraging and trampling, this allows a more robust layer of snow to form in the winter, which in turn increases albedo and insulates permafrost against melting.

In boreal forests, wolves are a keystone climate species. When they are absent, moose overgraze, which opens the canopy and increases ground warming. In tropical ecosystems, fructivorous animals are essential for seed dispersal, and their feces often provide necessary nutrients for the seed’s germination. In many ecosystems, urination by animals accelerates nitrogen cycling. In the final example, both coastal and open water marine systems have well-known animal drivers: the presence of sea otters allows kelp forests to flourish (and photosynthesize), whales pump nutrients from the deep to the surface (allowing algae to photosynthesize), and the carbon-rich bodies of anything that dies in the open ocean sink to the ocean floor, sequestering the carbon for thousands of years.

COP16 session on October 25, 2024, presenting findings from Schmitz et al. (2023). Trophic rewilding can expand natural climate solutions. Nature Climate Change, 13, 324-333. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01631-6.

Just calculating the additional ecosystem uptake of CO2 by protecting a shortlist of species (wildebeest, sea otter, grey wolf, tiger and reef sharks, muskox, and fish) shows that 5.8 GtCO2 per year is sequestered. Thus, the environmental community needs to change its mindset from animals are victims to animals are important drivers.

 Two. Rewilding Chile

Rewilding Chile is an organization operating on three axes: park creation, ecological restoration, community integration. After expanding Patagonia National Park into an area which was previously used for ranching, they saw an opportunity to set up an experiment looking at the carbon storage potential of different rewilding strategies.

Previously, the land had been severely degraded by sheep and cattle, and guanacos (the native large herbivore) and pumas had been systematically excluded. Rewilding Chile removed the sheep and cattle, as well as over 600 miles of fences, and set up two rewilding conditions: an area with just guanacos and an area with both guanacos and puma. They found that ecosystem-wide carbon storage increased by 1.5x with just guanacos present, and 2x with both guanacos and pumas on the landscape.

Three. Rewilding Global Alliance, IUCN

Maintaining or restoring the function of an ecosystem can be accomplished through focusing on the animals, which both addresses biodiversity and climate change. They propose a framework for identifying climate wildlife hotspots, places with both high or unique biodiversity and a high capacity for climate impacts either by the threat of loss of irreparable habitat (like melting permafrost) or the promise of restoring habitat (like wetlands and sea grasses). They note the importance of acting fast (“2030 is right around the corner” is a common refrain) and of empowering Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities to restore diversity and productivity. This is particularly important in the context of threats from climate change because it is poor people and poor countries who are hit hardest, and first by its effects since wealthy countries have a greater capacity to buffer against threat. The Global Rewilding Alliance and IUCN are currently in the analysis phase of this project (still crunching data to identify hotspots), but plan to shift into the implementation phase soon (the policy making phase).

Four. Synergistic Policy Solutions, IFAW

To aid in implementation, these two organizations are developing tools to help educate about possible policies and to show case studies of how those policies work in action (focusing on methods and outcomes). Synergistic Policy Solutions is launching a tool at the Baku COP meeting this year which will focus on improving policy for biodiversity protection and restoration, improving food consumption patterns, and shift agricultural systems as means of addressing the biodiversity and climate crisis. The IFAW noted that mentions of animals are largely absent from countries’ NDCs and suggests language (Including describing targets for how wildlife-nature interactions will contribute to climate/emission/drawdown goals) to get them in there for the 2025 updates. Guidelines at https://g.ifaw.org/wildlifeNDCs.

Five. Chilean Government

At the end of the panel, the moderator asked a representative of the Chilean government, the oceans minister, who was in the audience to give her thoughts. She stressed that timing is critical, agreeing that getting animals into the 2025 NDCs is essential. She explained that from her perspective as a bureaucrat, there are already existing solutions to be implemented if there is sufficient will, which would be better generated by scientists talking about what they know. The solution ought not to be techno-optimism, rather, the solution to our imbalance with nature exists in practices we already have, some that have been practiced for thousands of years. Finally, she emphasized that there is no shame in needing money for this, there is no shame in asking for or giving funding to the environment.

Six. Questions from the audience, answers from the panel (in very limited time)

Q: “What about looking at it from a functional capacity paradigm? Pollinators or seed dispersers generally rather than species specific”
A: “Yeah, they’re trying, this is a pretty new project so they’re still building out their models”

Q: “Species of interest were missing in Asia, are y’all looking into that?”
A: “Yeah, they’re trying, this is a pretty new project so they’re still building out their models”

Seven. Closing remarks (the moderator noted that he was referencing the 2022 Oscar winning movie)
“We will not win the battle unless we are doing everything, everywhere, all the time.”

Disclaimer: Opinions are solely those of the guest contributor and not an official ESA policy or position.