Human Impact Greens

Historical Ecologists have long stressed the fundamental importance of humans for biodiversity, but the problem lies in finding a good case to prove it. Researchers at the University of York’s Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity thought to look at pollen records across Europe during the dramatic period known as the Black Death, 1347- 1353, when Europe’s population was halved due to the bubonic plague.  In their study in Ecology Letters authors show that as population numbers declined so did the number of wild species. See commentaries in a Conversation article and related press coverage.