Natural History Wanderings

The National Science Foundation wrote about how the overhunting of large animals has a disastrous impact on trees. This leads to negative impacts on other plants and trees. They wrote

The elephant has long been an important spiritual, cultural and national symbol in Thailand. At the beginning of the 20th century, its numbers exceeded 100,000.

Today, those numbers have plunged to 2,000. Elephants, as well as other large, charismatic animals such as tigers, monkeys and civet cats, are under attack from hunters and poachers.

Overhunting of animals affects entire forest

While the loss of these animals is concerning for species conservation, now researchers at the University of Florida have shown that overhunting can have widespread effects on the forest itself.

Overhunting leads to the extinction of a dominant tree species, Miliusa horsfieldii, or the Miliusa beech, with likely cascading effects on other forest biota.

Read full story at nsf.gov – National Science Foundation NSF Discoveries – Fruits of the forest gone: Overhunting of large animals has catastrophic effects on trees – US National Science Foundation NSF.