A paper published this week in Current Biology describes some of the ideal mechanisms behind soil restoration. However, like many academic studies, it is questionably too complex and theoretical to be of practical use. It leaves me wondering how one would implement these measures. The authors point at several key factors: soil properties (S), climate (C), organisms (O), relief (R), parent material (P), age (A) and spatial position (N)’ adding ‘these factors interact in complex ways [and] understanding and manipulating [them] can aid in restoring soil biodiversityWhat is the definition of biodiversity? When we ask, what is the definition of biodiversity? It depends on what we want to do with it. The term is widely and commonly misused, leading to significant misinterpretation of the importance of how animals function on Earth and why they matter a great deal, to human survival. Here I will try to More.’ However, the inordinate scale of change required to do this, means uncovering an enabling condition so significant, that all complex factors needed to aid soil restoration, can be done planet-wide. Society has to be able to afford this too. In short, restoring soil biodiversity takes animals as they do all this for free.
Animals need to take the lead in restoration
Climate, for example, isn’t something that can be manipulated by hand. Even ignoring fossil-fuel-driven climate change, the weather and soil climate is a more local problem. This is only restored if soil-moisture and other processes are recreated. Only animals can do this at the scale needed.
The paper presents a modelThe process, either mathematically or in the human brain, of creating an internal version of something that we can refer to, to better understand how it functions and our place within. Scientific modelling is where we take the best knowledge we have and build a version of what will happen, if we assume certain parameters. For example, we might model More for success starting with manipulating the physical components of the system, then the chemical, then the biological. This is the ‘field of dreams’ hypothesis, which doesn’t work. Well, it works if you consider short-term gain of local species that easily move between sites. It doesn’t work when you maintain the threats to those species. World-over, farmland species are in heavy decline, which means soil impacts will only become worse.
While the authors identify the continuing exclusion of other animals as essential for soil recovery (even mentioning reintroduction) they don’t offer any insights into how this might be done.
Without these measures you end up with a dependence on manual fertilisation, use of pesticides and machinery. These are the same tools that have caused soil loss in the first place. They’ve also exacerbated the risk of periodic plagues of of locusts, mice and so on. Farms are already in decline and cannot afford this. Organic farming is no better if it doesn’t foster the right balance of wildlife in the landscape.
Why are animals nearly always an afterthought?
When the paper does mention animals it mainly mentions megafaunaThe largest animals that represent the top of the trophic pyramid. These are the final building blocks in ecosystem structures for maximum entropy production. Megafauna can be measured at any spatial scale. The largest animal that ever lived on Earth is the Blue Whale. In a grassland, spiders could be considered megafauna The term is generally reserved for animals larger More – dingoes, rhinos or bison. In the UK for example, field voles would be essential. Badgers also. Australia’s Odonata Foundation has created many of these outcomes within a few years by simply reintroducing the Eastern Barred Bandicoot.
The authors, however, fall back to a human-intervention process e.g. the adding of prebiotics and innoculants. Engineered plant microbiomes are the next frontier in industrial farming. As billionaires and the companies that have wrought so much destruction already from agrochemicals, promise the global delivery of these types of biological interventions. What could go wrong?
These human-interventions seem always to be preferred over the reintroduction of animals. Of course. Because the dollars flow to companies that supply them. Even though animals freely maintain these soil mixtures, which act like our gut fauna, without dependence on even more costly resources.
The authors recognise that:
Healthy soil ecosystemsHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More — with intrinsic natural capacities and limitations — are often complex and teeming with life, from bacteria and fungi to arthropods, earthworms and megafauna (e.g., small-to-large burrowing mammals), each playing vital roles in maintaining soil health and fertility.
Why is it so hard then, to state that restoring ‘healthy’ soil means simultaneously making it ‘teem with life’ such as small-to-large burrowing mammals? The paper does not include a robust overview on the reintroduction and protection of these species. Why do we always assume that this is the last thing that needs to be done when it should be among the first?
A dream in a field
The principle focus remains on manipulating and artificially recreating conditions because land managers would rather play God using artificial biological and chemical intervention, and machinery.
It’s as though the authors are only just discovering how significant animals are. An unreferenced and important fact appears in the summary: ‘earthworms alone underpin 6.5% of the world’s grain production’. The authors even note that:
Healthy soil ecosystems — with intrinsic natural capacities and limitations — are often complex and teeming with life, from bacteria and fungi to arthropods, earthworms and megafauna (e.g., small-to-large burrowing mammals), each playing vital roles in maintaining soil health and fertility.
Yet the paper quickly reverts to ideas that are little different to the traditional farming-oriented way we have thought about managing ecosystems over the last 100 years. That’s to say, step in and single-handedly manipulate every component of a system, until it matches our expectations.
The measures proposed for soil restoration are unlikely to work as even simple farm ecosystems are far too complex to predict or maintain by people alone. The energyEnergy and nutrients are the same thing. Plants capture energy from the Sun and store it in chemicals, via the process of photosynthesis. The excess greenery and waste that plants create, contain chemicals that animals can eat, in order to build their own bodies and reproduce. When a chemical is used this way, we call it a nutrient. As we More, money and time it takes to make a system behave the way someone wants it to, is prohibitive. The more we fiddle, the more rome burns. Without a very low-cost mechanism to restore soil this literally becomes a dream in a field.
A missed opportunity
To date, I’ve only read one paper that has unequivocally and unashamedly stated that animals are necessary for ecosystem stability. While all scientific discourse is valuable any paper on ecosystem function(Of an ecosystem). A subset of ecosystem processes and structures, where the ecosystem does something that provides an ecosystem service of value to people. More that omits animal impactWhat is Animal Impact? Without wildlife, Earth would not be habitable for humans, because it's animals that stabilise ecosystems. It’s a fundamental law of nature that animals (and humans) exist because we are the most likely lifeforms to minimise environmental chaos. Animal impact, therefore, is a measure of how much all wildlife is collectively responsible for creating a habitable Earth. The More as a key function is overlooking its most valuable contribution to society.
Firstly, it’s the chance to hammer home the fact that animals are critical for humanity’s future. Second, it’s turning theory into practice.
So much academic publication is founded on the right principles but veer off into a dead end, given little understanding of how it might be applied. A quick look at the economic and ecosystem realities of soil restoration and it’s obvious that conservationWhy is animal conservation important? Animal conservation is important, because animals are the only mechanism to create biodiversity, which is the mechanism that creates a habitable planet for humans. Without animals, the energy from today’s plants (algae, trees, flowers etc) will eventually reach the atmosphere and ocean, much of it as carbon. The quantity of this plant-based waste is so More of wildlife in farming landscapes is the number one priority.
