Search

Pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherer populations were fully integrated in natural systems, they played an ecological role as top predators affecting food web dynamics according to predator-prey models, through which they maintained and controlled prey species numbers. However, human abilities to adapt to changing environments and different habitats as well as their capacity to expand, allowed them to occupy new environments in a formidable short lapse of time, where potential preys were unable to defend themselves against such a powerful predator. Humans were the origin of megafauna extinction in the America continent and other regions. But it was since Neolithic times, at the end of the last glacial period, when a huge change took place as humans started to manage and change the local environment through incipient crop cultivation and animal breeding. The ecological role of humans changed dramatically because, as technological advances progressed, as well as their survival rate and the ability to withstand severe weather conditions, they became a powerful species with the ability to alter all the environments and the eventual capacity to destroy them, often unintentionally. Further, humans have moved and introduced alien species across the world, causing unexpected outcomes, some of them seriously deleterious for the host fauna and flora. Currently, humans are increasingly concerned about land degradation and global warming effects and see the necessity of undertaking habitat restoration and promoting the so-called rewilding processes, including the reintroduction of wild grazers and large predators to attempt restore original food webs. An ecologically-driven human hunting activity may help in this restoration process, occupying top predators' empty niches and promoting rural development through the sustainable use of the hunting resource. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]