[dexwiz]

I remember listening to that and it really struck me how much a single species could change an environment. I wonder how many ecosystems we praise as natural are actually warped by human introduction of species in the last few thousand millennia.

[myshpa]

In "Fall of civilizations" series [0] there is somewhere a mention of caravans thousands of camels long, thousands years ago, going through north africa. Imagining this one has to wonder how populous their goat herds were in that time and how much their grazing helped to degrade the pre-sahara/sahel ecosystems.

Maybe we should try to reforest those areas again.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/c/FallofCivilizationsPodcast/playlis... - highly recommended

[PicassoCTs]

The whole desertification of the middle east can be blamed on goat herding of nomadic farmers.

[diordiderot]

I've heard that before. Are there any good books/ papers on the topic?

[PicassoCTs]

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316721412_Blame_it_...

https://epar.evans.uw.edu/research/environmental-implication...

Its inconclusive on the goats. but the overall appearing cities and nomadic lifestyle selling whool to cities might have amplified the whole situation. Todays nomads definitely amplify the situation

[diordiderot]

Very cool. Thank you

[PicassoCTs]

This is also not limited to the middle east. A surprising lots of bioms are not resistant to animal grazing and collapse/become smaller when "attacked" with it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_sheep

https://www.climatechangepost.com/iceland/desertification/