Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 November 2009
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, concern for the damage caused by herbivores, or the absence of young trees in forests appears to have been growing. Many of these problems can be linked to changes in ungulate populations. Deer have been increasing intermittently in the temperate region for 100–200 years, and some problems with forest regeneration can be linked directly to these increases.
The fossil record shows that very large herbivores, related to those present in Africa and Asia today, were prevalent throughout the temperate region. Herbivores, including ancestral forms of the tapirs, horses and rhinos, and later many proboscidians (elephants and mammoths) and artiodactyls (cattle, deer, hippos and giraffe), have been present almost continuously since the Eocene, with browsing species particularly linked with forested environments (Yalden 1999, Agusti & Anton 2002). The last of the large herbivores disappeared only around 11 000 years ago. In the last few hundred years there have been further losses: the distribution of bison, Bison bonasus and B. bison, has shrunk dramatically in both Europe and North America, and Aurochsen, Bos primigenius (wild cattle), have gone extinct.
The disappearance of large wild herbivores from temperate regions at the end of the last ice age was followed sometime later by the arrival of domestic livestock. Grazing by early pasturalists in forests presumably dates from the time when livestock husbandry first spread from the Middle East to western Europe between 10 000 and 5000 years ago (Clutton‐Brock 1989).
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.