Historic livelihoods and land uses as ecological disturbances and their role in enhancing biodiversity: An example from Bhutan

International conservation efforts have ignored the role and importance of historic disturbance regimes, both natural and anthropogenic, in creating and maintaining biodiversity. In this article we focus on historic livelihoods and land uses which we argue can and should be viewed as a type of intermediate ecological disturbance that may increase landscape heterogeneity which is correlated with biological diversity. Using historic swidden in Bhutan as an example, we illustrate how this historic livelihood and land use maintained intermediate ecological disturbances in an otherwise densely forested landscape and increased plant structural heterogeneity, the proportion of early successional plant species, and the availability of forage and browse of importance to wild ungulates and their predators (e.g., tigers). The cessation of swidden in Bhutan and elsewhere alters historic disturbance regimes with potentially profound effects on flora and fauna. We argue that biodiversity conservation requires understanding and building upon ecological disturbance regimes which should include historic livelihoods and land uses. To be realized in practice, this requires not only further ecological study, but addressing the politics of knowledge.