Praires absolutely do require management. Floods and fires can and do lead to critical endangerment of plants and animals.
Overgrazing wildlife also need to be controlled with predators who in turn often need to be contained to prevemt damage to human settlements or overpopulation leading to periods of death and disease for the animals.
In theory if you have well suited animals to fill each role, wide open replacement habitats for migrating to in emergency, and no invasive pest problems; it could be self sufficient, but thats pretty much never going to be the case.
Floods and fire can impact ecosystem composition at a local or regional scale, but these components are entirely necessary for ecosystem renewal and diversity. As parts of an ecosystem are disturbed, it opens niche space for early seral plants. Fire cycles can vary substantially even grasslands.
The reason these systems need human management now is because they have been highly disturbed, and the whole system is out of whack. Roughly 2-5% of the tall grass prairie remains. The overgrazing and invasive pests/plants issue you touch on is anthropogenic in origin, not so much in undisturbed systems.
Praires absolutely do require management. Floods and fires can and do lead to critical endangerment of plants and animals.
Overgrazing wildlife also need to be controlled with predators who in turn often need to be contained to prevemt damage to human settlements or overpopulation leading to periods of death and disease for the animals.
In theory if you have well suited animals to fill each role, wide open replacement habitats for migrating to in emergency, and no invasive pest problems; it could be self sufficient, but thats pretty much never going to be the case.
I disagree.
Floods and fire can impact ecosystem composition at a local or regional scale, but these components are entirely necessary for ecosystem renewal and diversity. As parts of an ecosystem are disturbed, it opens niche space for early seral plants. Fire cycles can vary substantially even grasslands.
The reason these systems need human management now is because they have been highly disturbed, and the whole system is out of whack. Roughly 2-5% of the tall grass prairie remains. The overgrazing and invasive pests/plants issue you touch on is anthropogenic in origin, not so much in undisturbed systems.