SFI External Professor Andrew Dobson warns of a possible ecological feedback loop if the Tanzanian government proceeds with plans to construct a major commercial highway through Serengeti National Park.
Dobson, a professor of conservation biology and infectious disease ecology at Princeton University, who has worked in the Serengeti since 1986, said an expected decline in wildebeest numbers to a quarter their current numbers could indirectly destroy the region's function as a major carbon sink.
“If the wildebeest population declines by even fifty percent it could lead to an increase in the fire frequency in the park, as less grass would be eaten - this could flip the entire system from a major carbon sink into a major source of carbon,” he says in The Ecologist.