Re- Wilding: Update

A lot of misinformed objections continue to arise from the proposal to repopulate the Great Plains with a "Revived Pleistocene". Two letters to Nature, here and here , make points that have little to do with the project. The author of the first worries both that the introductions won't work and that if they do they will decrease biodiversity on the Plains. He doesn't seem to realize that the lack of success of the entirely domestic southern camel, the dromedary, in 19th Century Arizona, may have little to do with the introduction of northern Bactrians to the much more similar (to Asia) northern plains-- and that these Asian camels are more like our lost American camels.

He also is apparently unaware of the studies that suggest that even random intros are statistically likely to increase biodiversity-- and that the proposed ones are far from random and in fact have been picked to be identical species or nearly so to the lost ones

Finally, he speaks of the "new equilibria" of the Plains. What equilibrium-- cow monoculture? Tim Flannery, scientist and green icon, suggests, for what it's worth, that North America has NEVER had a stable ecology, at least since the Ice.

The other letter writer correctly states that there are new programs starting in Africa to conserve lions and cheetahs, and ones in Asia for snow leopards. Good things, really. But the snow leopard is irrelevant to the Plains plan, and the others presuppose that saving a species in one place precludes saving it in another. Apart from placing an awful lot of reliance on unstable African governments and ignoring possible population pressures, why not try both? Let a thousand flowers bloom!

I started thinking that Re- Wilding was a possible good in a hundred years. Although I still think that is a reasonable schedule, the feebleness of the objections is making me much more "pro".