A solitary bushbuck grazes on the floodplain near Lake Urema in Gorongosa National Park. Prior to the Mozambican civil war, which lasted from 1977 to 1992, bushbuck avoided this treeless area, despite the nutrient-rich plants available.
Photo by Matthew Hutchinson, Princeton University
A team of Princeton ecologists took advantage of a rare opportunity to study what happens to an ecosystem when large carnivores are wiped out.
Liz Fuller-Wright, Office of Communications, March 7, 2019 2 p.m.
“Large carnivores play a critical, and disproportionate, role in their ecosystems, and their populations are declining worldwide,” said Justine Atkins, a graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton. “However, there is real reason to be hopeful in many of these systems,” she said. She and a team of colleagues found evidence that reintroducing key carnivores in a large-mammal ecosystem could undo the damage caused by their removal. Their work appears in the March 8 issue of the journal Science.
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