There are a lot of stories about, and a lot of predictably silly reactions to, yesterday's proposal for "Re- Wilding" America. Here is a relatively sober one from New Scientist.
One from CNN yesterday-- no longer available-- contained some remarkable statements. The outrage from the stockman's association was predictable but sad-- I actually support public land grazing, but they will have to become a lot more innovative to survive.
But biologists should know better, and think before they shoot off their mouths. One compared the possible introductions to that of rabbits in Australia. Get a grip! Australia had no placental mammals, ever, before the introductions! We had lions, arguably conspecific with today's, no more than 12,000 years ago. Horses, fully conspecific. We may have had both longer than the modern Eurasian bears and wolves the same people are apparently worrying about. The other species-- camels, cheetahs, elephants etc are very like lost ones.
Second: time scale, anyone? I don't think anyone is arguing mass deportation from the plains. But if they continue their present loss of population over the next century the whole idea becomes more feasible. I was being SEMI- facetious about the Henrys, but they might form a containable test plot, especially for non- desert species. Their bisons stay in.
Third: some worry about the loss of --- African tourism!-- if the plains have lions and elephants. This is plain silly. Africa has a lot more than those two species. And if it loses tourism it may have more to do with AIDS, city crime in places like Nairobi, and despots and kleptocrats like Robert Mugabe than some plan to introduce animals to America. When I went to Zimbabwe in '96 there was plenty of tourism-- not so now.
Finally: just because an idea is conceived on the ranch of an egomaniacal, paranoid, Soviet Union- loving, Catholic- bashing, bad- neighbor- with- bad- fences billionaire like Ted Turner does not make it a bad idea. Really. I know at least one of the authors (Paul Martin) and he is above petty considerations.
See y'all next week.
3 comments:
Can modern elephants survive cold winters in America?
Asian elephants could probably take more cold-- they once ranged well up into China.
Than there is the possibility of cloning mammoths, which are closely related to Asian elephants -- not all that far fetched.Here is an essay, by a guy I take very seriously, on how easy it would be to clone a mammoth and some related issues.
Resurrecting Extinct Megafauna
http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/agenbroad.html
Rebecca-- on a hundred year time scale it looks less impossible. I think the Chinese may plan that far ahead militarily.
Don't know what she meant by it, -but I once knew a woman in Montana who had a bumper sticker stating "Natural selection starts HERE".
I think this is an excellent idea, but I don't think we should wait a hundred years to get started. Let's start now by reintroducing free-range wolves and cougars in New Jersey and Connecticut. How about coyotes in the Hamptons, and rattlesnakes in Manhattan.
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