Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research's video: LINKOnline Webinar: Looking to the past with a view to the future

Over the past decade the field of ‘conservation palaeobiology’ has become increasingly utilised in conservation biology practice and policy around the world. Conservation palaeobiolgy uses insights gleaned from fossil records to reconstruct biological baseline states and understand how climatic or environmental perturbations can affect species and their ecosystems. A relatively recent but severe history of extinctions and vegetation change, combined with extensive well-preserved fossil records spanning the past 50,000 years, means that conservation palaeobiology has a lot to offer in terms of understanding New Zealand ecosystems. This webinar highlights recent work by the Long-term Ecology group that uses fossil records to produce knowledge with direct relevance to conservation management and policy. Topics covered include: vegetation baselines, restoration of ecological interactions and assessing impacts of introduced herbivores.