One of the most striking human impacts on global biodiversity is the ongoing depletion of large vertebrates from terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Recent work suggests this loss of megafauna can affect processes at biome or Earth system scales with potentially serious impacts on ecosystem structure and function, ecosystem services, and biogeochemical cycles. We argue that our contemporary approach to biodiversity conservation focuses on spatial scales that are too small to adequately address these impacts. We advocate a new global approach to address this conservation gap, which must enable megafaunal populations to recover to functionally relevant densities. We conclude that re-establishing biome and Earth system functions needs to become an urgent global priority for conservation science and policy.

人类对全球生物多样性最显着的影响之一是陆地和水生生态系统中大型脊椎动物的持续枯竭。最近的研究表明，这种巨型动物的消失会影响生物群落或地球系统尺度的过程，并可能对生态系统结构和功能、生态系统服务和生物地球化学循环产生严重影响。我们认为，我们当代的生物多样性保护方法侧重于太小而无法充分应对这些影响的空间尺度。我们提倡一种新的全球方法来解决这一保护缺口，这必须使巨型动物种群恢复到功能相关的密度。我们的结论是，重建生物群落和地球系统功能需要成为保护科学和政策的紧迫全球优先事项。