Putting it all together
To your original point about going beyond 80% restoration Chosun - it does not seem likely to me that going much beyond that would be possible if introducing a major new component - i.e. hard-hooved cattle - where they never were before has any likelihood of reaching 100% restoration - its too big a change - especially in a specialised habitat. Even without the cattle it may not be possible depending on what has been lost that we perhaps don't know about.
On the other hand restoration of e.g. prairie or other habitats which did see large concentrations of herbivores it might be more viable to return closer to the original state.
Mike - the 80% I spoke of is in relation to bird species possible, given sufficient natural environmental connectivity using a particular woodland restoration model. That model (McIntyre et al.) is 10% fenced off conserved natural habitat + 20% fenced connected natural (or restored) habitat which may see occasional primary production use - short term (a few days annually) crash grazing, etc + the remaining 70% balance of the land area for productive primary production.
This is applicable even with introduced grazing animals - provided they are well managed.This requires:-
* keeping them out of permanent and ephemeral wetlands, and watercourses /riparian areas and headwaters. This has not been done well historically and is a major cause of a large part of the damage done since invasion (destroying reed beds etc ruined the hydrological functioning in as little as a decade, kick started erosion and drying of the land). It would require stock proof fencing and pumped to remote trough watering.
* keeping them moving according to holistic rotational and regenerative grazing principles. This mimics the short term only grazing pressure and constant moving to fresh areas as brought about by natural predatory pressures.
* keeping them off other fragile ecosystems /soils /slopes etc. This requires some pretty fancy farm planning and fencing.
* stocking capacity according to seasonal conditions, with maintenance of a minimum ground cover level as the absolute overriding consideration and driver.
I believe some additional bird % species restoration /preservation is possible beyond this by also applying cutting edge techniques such as - old growth augmentation (hollows, structure, nesting sites/ materials, raptor perches etc), mimicry, and timelines acceleration, pasture cropping, multi-species grazing, inter-shrub-row cropping/grazing, natural sequence farming wetland restoration etc, composting, agroforestry, integrated pest management, Indigenous knowledge and management - pyrolytic cultural burns, dreaming, singing the land, etc, and even agrivoltaics.
I will post a few links after detailing some of these .....
I truly believe (and have demonstrated) that not only is it possible to turn this ship around - but vast improvements can be made.
Chosun :gh: