Since the beginning of industrialization, the economic viability of manufacturing companies relied on the exploitation of natural resources. From 2000 to 2019, the global consumption of raw materials surged by 65%, with 70% of these materials being non‐renewable. Addressing this unsustainable trajectory, the United Nations emphasizes “Responsible consumption and production” as a sustainable development goal (SDG 12), advocatin...

Understanding ecosystem resilience to human impacts is critical for conservation and restoration. The large‐scale die‐off of New England salt marshes was triggered by overfishing and resulted from decades of runaway crab grazing. In 2009, however, cordgrass began to recover, decreasing die‐off ∼40% by 2010. We used surveys and experiments to test whether plant–substrate feedbacks underlie marsh resilience. Initially, grazer‐ge...

Overexploitation of predators has been linked to the collapse of a growing number of shallow‐water marine ecosystems. However, salt‐marsh ecosystems are often viewed and managed as systems controlled by physical processes, despite recent evidence for herbivore‐driven die‐off of marsh vegetation. Here we use field observations, experiments, and historical records at 14 sites to examine whether the recently reported die‐off of n...