The data they used were collected from 20 streams during the years 2001 to 2020 and they note the aboveground biomass increase is due to a lot fewer elk, which was caused by a lot more wolves. "Balance of nature" wins.
Except data don't show that. This analysis is observational, the authors didn't do anything except look at computers, and therefore EXPLORATORY rather than science, because the results are both dramatically different from science studies and because not all sites showed any recovery at all.
It is the same old 'Fall From Eden' narrative by those who treat the natural world as a religion. Human tinkering bad, nature good and to 'Return To Eden' we must abandon Satan's Apple of modern technology and harmony will reign. It's not only scientifically suspect, nature is not predictable, the "balance of nature" narrative is weirdly teleological and yet remains the "foundational metaphor in ecology", which means journalists who don't know any better repeat it to the public, who then also continue to believe it.
Trophic cascades are not predictable nor linear. Every wildlife biologist knows it. Conservationists, nope.
Wolves are a case in point. Because nature is chaos they don't know they are only supposed to kill wild animals near streams. They attack everything everywhere but once the Carter administration - even after the 1970s Gaia Hypothesis was debunked as thoroughly as the Clements Balance Of Nature had been 60 years before - listed them as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, local voices had no say in putting more of them back and in 1995 wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone.
Elk populations plummeted, as did the lucrative hunting trade that funds wildlife biology using hunting licenses. Despite evidence of harm, in 2022 the Biden administration ordered even stronger protections for wolves and introduction everywhere except among the Northern Rocky Mountain population. No matter how many of your cattle they kill, you can't touch them and because it is a federal law, ranchers joke they'd do less jail time for shooting the Democrats who colluded with activists to penalize local people than they would if they shot the wolves.(1)
The authors contend higher plants along steams is also good for birds, and while that is true there is no shortage of birds. Wind farms are even allowed to kill federally protected bald eagles with their turbines and penalties are waived. Riparian areas are such a small fraction of the landscape where wolves prey it is like demanding we cut the speed limit of cars to 5 MPH using 'if it can save even one life' thinking.
In other words, it is academics and urban keyboard activists and politicians who believe it, not the small ranchers who lose 4,000 animals per year and millions of dollars, and everyone else spending their evenings trying to prevent attacks.
There is no balance of nature, if there was Amazonians wouldn't routinely starve. Norway keeps wolves under control and there are 500 hunting application per wolf each year because people actually at risk want them controlled.
They know that in the real world there is no balance and humans have to manage chaos, because nature revels in it.
NOTE:
(1) Those jokes are now okay, since Democratic organizations are funding social media content encouraging violence against politicians on the other side, health insurance CEOs, and Jews. If Democrats would stop encouraging each other to murder people, and then doing it, we wouldn't need more gun bans that Democrats also lobby to get.
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