Paleo- and historical ecology contributions to baselines for restoration and reintroductions in central Chile

Abstract Central Chile, despite being a zone of conservation prioritization and threat, only benefits from limited ecological restoration and species reintroductions. We suggest that this is due to a lack of integration between ecology and historical ecology and paleo-ecology, and a consequent lack of baseline scenarios for public consideration. Here, we review the knowledge and knowledge gaps around the distributions, habitats, and ecological roles and interactions of a set of extant and extinct plant and animal species of conservation interest. We synthesize the current ecological understanding, which describes an accepted pre-Columbian ecological scenario, and we construct an alternative scenario based on the review and integration of paleo-ecological and historical sources. Both scenarios agree there has been significant land-cover change over the past 500 years, but disagree on pre-Columbian baselines. The accepted scenario proposes a species-poor primordial high forest without disturbance, evolving in isolation with static species distributions and realized niches, and recently threatened by invasive species. The alternative paleo-ecology-informed scenario proposes a frequently disturbed habitat mosaic whose community composition across time is dominated by long-distance dispersal, the Pleistocene-Holocene megafaunal extinctions, and changing species distributions and realized niches. We propose specific potential restoration baselines for the alternative scenario. Both scenarios can be the basis for hypotheses, restoration baselines, and novel environmental narratives.