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Bump and his colleagues studied a 50-year record of more than 3,600 moose carcasses at Isle Royale. They measured the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium levels in the soil at paired sites of wolf-killed moose carcasses and controls. They also analyzed the microbes and fungi in the soil and the leaf tissue of large-leaf aster, a common native plant eaten by moose in eastern and central North America.

They found that soils at carcass sites had 100 to 600 percent more inorganic nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium than soil from surrounding control sites. Carcass sites also had an average of 38 percent more bacterial and fungal fatty acids, evidence of increased growth of bacteria and fungi.

The nitrogen levels in plants growing on the carcass sites was from 25 to 47 percent higher than the levels at the control sites. Since large herbivores, like moose, are attracted to nitrogen-rich plants, the carcass sites become foraging sites, further supplementing soil nutrients from the urine and feces of the animals eating there.

"I was initially skeptical that it would be possible to detect something as diffuse in the forest floor as nutrients from dead animals," said Peterson, who has been studying the wolves and moose of Isle Royale for decades. "It was gratifying to see Joseph succeed in following animal-derived nutrients back into plants to enrich them in protein, ready to be eaten again."

I've long complained that magical thinkers fail to grasp the consequences of harvesting crops and livestock. Whatever is removed from the land must be replaced or there will be montonic degradation over time.

If nothing is removed, or is circularly replaced, then things can continue for a very long time. Maybe grazers - everything from ruminants to insects - remove material from one place but they deposit it in another nearby. These gifts are reciprocal. Even passing birds make deposits, and eventually they will die and be eaten. Dust to dust.

Humans haul things off to remote locations and seldom return the materials after use. If they did return what was taken - even the carcasses of their defunct friends and relatives - that would be different, more natural and sustainable. Failing that they must pay their debts to the land in another currency. The more they take the more they owe. There's no free lunch.

But there seems to be a benefit to "hot spots", places that are unusually fertile. Nature is lumpy, uneven, so it makes sense that diverse life would thrive in diverse conditions.