Abandoned Farms Are a Hidden Resource for Restoring Biodiversity

Most of that exodus has been from the countryside, where for the past two years Daskalova has been researching 30 Bulgarian villages, including Tyurkmen, to chart in detail how nature is colonizing the abandoned land...

In the cases of both abandoned farmland and degraded forests, researchers such as Daskalova say our preconceptions about categorizing landas pristine forest, production forest, protected, farmland, or urban areastoo often blinds us to the environmental potential of these largely unmapped border lands, wastelands, backwoods, and no-go areas...

The unanswered questions are about what kind of nature returns and whetherby mapping, studying, managing, and protecting these vast tracts of abandoned landwe could increase their potential to meet global goals for climate change mitigation and the restoration of species and their habitats...

Likewise, in a well-known example in the Southern US, an Asian vine called kudzu, which was first planted widely to restore lands deserted during the Dust Bowl era, has gone from being a boon to a curse, invading abandoned farmland, pastures, and woodland, wrecking buildings, downing power lines, and strangling trees...

Rayden did an analysis of Mesoamerica that found that proper management of degraded forests could increase the amount of carbon stored in the regions forests by two-thirds, compared to just targeting cleared former forest land.. Handing land back to nature is no silver bullet for either the worlds climate or biodiversity ills..

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