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Reintroduce Megafauna to North America?
sneakers563 writes "A team of scientists is proposing reintroducing large mammals such as elephants, lions, cheetahs and wild horses to North America to replace populations lost 13,000 years ago. The scientists say that parks could be set up as breeding sanctuaries for species of large wild animals under threat in Africa and Asia, and that such ecological history parks could be major tourist attractions. 'Africa and parts of Asia are now the only places where megafauna are relatively intact, and the loss of many of these species within this century seems likely,' the team said."
I would have thought that they might lose some of their ability to handle the effects of megafauna...
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This sounds great in theory, but where in the US are we going to put free roaming lions so they will be no danger to persistantly encroaching civilization?
Do they not think that they would affect what is currently inhabiting those parks? I see that this can be a real problem. Not to mention the law suits that might come if some kids tries to feed a lion and winds up being a meal.
Reintroducing the modern relatives of the Late Pleistocene losers to North America could spark fresh interest in conservation, contribute to biodiversity and begin to put right some of the wrongs caused by human activities.
Those animals are dwindling in numbers for a reason and should remain as such. Believe it or not that's the nature of the Earth. Superior animals control populations of other animals and sometimes entire populations die creating chain reactions.
I am thrilled that we have advanced enough scientifically to help with animal populations but I really think that we should just let it go and let the Earth work the way it has for billions of years.
Shit happens -- let's work with the way the world works rather than trying to recreate how it was all the time.
More proof that being "educated" means squat.
Let us not forget all of the other misguided attempts at relocation. (Rabbits and cane toads in oz, anyone?)
Lets not forget how far south the North American winter pushes - sure, I can totally see a lion in Nebraska... with 50mph north winds and horizontally falling snow.
we had facilities where we could breed and look over endangered species here in North America.
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They were Bison, actually ;) Buffalo were never in north america.
If they all died out 13000 years ago it can't exactly be blamed on modern man. Even men of 13000 years ago wouldn't have been likely to systematically kill several species. There weren't that many people and they were still roaming around in small groups.
I like elephants, lions, ligers, and tions as much as the next guy. Nonetheless, I'd rather have a nuclear plant near me then a wild animal preserve. I'd definately be a lot safer! I've heard some of those creatures can even do magic.
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If the elephants and lions and wild horses are smart enough to stop fucking the members of the herd that are obviously diseased and dying, then I say more goddamned power to them, welcome to the country, here's a slab of ribs to gnaw on.
And it's not "US imposed intellectual property laws" that are keeping those people from effective drugs, it's the fact that there AREN'T any effective drugs. HIV/AIDS will end when the people who have it finally STOP FUCKING HEALTHY PEOPLE and all die. Easy, quick, and morally unambiguous, ain't it? Then we can go back to spending money on diseases that people just randomly wake up with, as opposed to ones that we know exactly how the fuck to AVOID getting.
Evolution is great for wiping up species when conditions change. If conditions change back then the survivors may find that they are not very well adapted to the new conditions.
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So what you're telling me is that major extinctions happen without human intervention? Who knew? (Just don't tell the endangered species people.)
What if the extinction of some species causes that "cure" species to evolve to fill the niche?
Let's stop the ecological guessing games.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
You ask the Australians if they think its a good idea... bullfrogs, rabbits etc...
Introducing alien animals into the wild will cause native animals to die out. American zoologists arn't stupid. I smell a big corporation thinking it can make a quick buck, whilst appearing to be environmentally friendly.
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Seems the continent has had 13,000 years for it's ecosystems to adapt to the current state of things, why screw it up with sudden introduction of species that weren't actually here in the first place?
Maybe because in most places the ecosystem has not adapted very well at all. For the last several hundred years pretty much every large predator in North America has been brought to the brink of extinction except one, humans. Sure there are some mountain lions here or there, and a few wolves (that are mostly wolf coyote hybrids now), but they are all endangered species. The life of the typical wild herd animal, like deer, usually ends with being killed by a human or by dying slowly of disease or starvation. I can't tell you how many game animals I've disposed of because half their face was rotted away by some disease and there are no predators left to kill the sick ones.
With decreasing space for animals to live, the overcrowding and resultant disease and starvation is getting much worse. Now this proposal to introduce large foreign species may or may not help the situation. What really needs to happen is a reduction in human overpopulation, but I don't see that happening anytime soon either.
Breeding big cats isn't particularly difficult and if anything there's a huge excess of them in captivity. Most of them are mutts that are useless for conservation purposes.
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HIV isn't a passively transmitted disease. You have to do something to get the disease (unless you are raped, but how frequent is that?).
Rape is actually quite common in all cultures, especially in cultures that do not have a legal system with strong controls on sexual crimes or the ability to enforce them. Women are usually the victims of rape, partly due to culture and partly due to their lack of physical strength compared to men.
Condoms aren't so new and complex as to have currently active patents on them.
Unfortunately, in many cultures, condoms are strictly taboo. This is true even in some cultures in the United States.
What if the extinction of some species causes that "cure" species to evolve to fill the niche?
;)
I think we might need the cure a bit sooner than that
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You said it yourself, humans haven't just eliminated the predators, we've supplanted them. The human population is not the problem. The human unwillingness to fulful the role of the missing predators is. We should be eating the animals that aren't being eaten by packs of wolves anymore. Your anecdote about the diseased deer just proves the point: we need more predators like you to keep the deer population in check.
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Huh? Even I didn't think this was insightful... I don't know what's more concerning: the idea of Jurassic Park-like consequences, or that apparently someone thought it was possible.
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You know, those wild places like iowa
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Remember GM corn- how the scientists thought 200 yards was far enough away from natural corn to be safe....while forgetting that the typical native honeybee has a cruising range of over five miles?
I think you'll find that that particular event was profit-driven, not a scientific thing. But heck, let's bash those over-educated intellectuals anyway...
I think it's the other way around, but whatever. And there isn't much point of being at the top of the food chain if we keep making the food chain smaller and smaller by eliminating other species, which even if we don't eat can hurt us by starving species that we eat which in turn would eat the extinct animals, etc etc
Go hug some trees.
We have a massive wild reserve of native fauna: it's called the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), and its megafauna are why it's an absolutely stupid idea to drill there for a small amount of oil.
I love stuff like this. 99% of all species that ever existed are gone. One day man will be added to that list. I love how man somehow thinks they can change the course of evolution or hold back the constant change in nature. If a species can't adapt to the environment they go extinct. Welcome to evolution.
There is this thing called American Buffalo, species name Bison Bison. I think the US Fish and Wildlife Services is a bit more authoritative then some group with axes to grind. Your link for Buffalo is listed as an Indonesia Bull. That is known as a water buffalo.
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Evolution is great for wiping up species when conditions change. If conditions change back then the survivors may find that they are not very well adapted to the new conditions.
Evolution doesn't wipe out anything. Changing conditions or better competitors coming along does.
If conditions change back new spcies will evolve to fill the new conditions.
Geez. I have mod points and I have to give up moderating in order to respond to this. Thanks.
So, based on the fact that Mountain Lions can kill people, should we also go after dogs? According to this site, in the U.S. between 1979 and the late 1990s, over 300 people were killed by dogs. That means your family dog is much more likely to kill you than any "wild animal".
Mountain lions are moving in next door to everybody.Not me. I live in the suburbs. People can choose to live wherever they want. If you choose to live in a hurricane zone, you will have hurricanes. If you choose to live in an earthquake zone, you will have earthquakes. If you choose to live in an area where Mountain Lions, Bobcats and Alligators live, you will see those animals (BTW, there are relatives of the Mountain Lion in Florida).
If people can't handle living in an area where wild animals live, either people should learn to deal with the results of their choice in living arrangements...or they should move.
For the record, I think bringing elephants and lions here to the US is a bad idea.
Just because lions are now predominantly found in warm weather climates does not mean that they have no adaptations for cold weather climates. It could be the case that lions no longer inhabit colder regions for other reasons, such as being crowded out of their habitats by other species or being hunted to extinction.
Do note that many big cats, mountain lions and siberian tigers for example, inhabit cold regions. And in fact, lions ranged over most of eastern Europe and Asia up until the 2nd century AD. And cheetahs were once found as far north as northern Iran. The US certainly has some geographical areas with more temperate zones than along the coast of the Caspian Sea.
Is it just me, or shouldn't we save our own mega-fauna before saving others? Reachieving the balance that existed in the 1600s seems far more important than that which existed 13k years ago.
Besides, I don't see anyone trying to bring back the wooly mammoth!
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"We should be eating the animals that aren't being eaten by packs of wolves anymore." ... excepting people are squeamish about eating diseased animals. Wasting disease, which is running rampant in Elk herds in the rockies is a very close cousin to mad cow disease. Though its not currently thought to be transmitable to humans, I doubt you want to go out of your way to eat Elk infected with it.
But, these scientists really don't have a clue what kind of buzz saw they would face trying to introduce foreign predators in to the U.S. Farmers and ranchers who have substantial political clout, especially with the current administration, would fight it to the death unless its in heavily fenced parks more like zoos. They need to look no further than the massive resistance there has been to protecting and reintroducing the grizzly and wolves.
I saw on the news a week or so ago states around Yellowstone are probably going to resume hunting the formerly endangered grizzly bear if they are foolish enough to wander outside the bounds of the park. Ranchers have zero tolerance for predators, and they control most of the land not in parks.
One reason elephants are endangered is they don't mesh well with farmers or any kind of civilization because its nearly impossible to stop them from demolishing farms, unless you put them in small areas with major, expensive, fencing.
@de_machina
The problem isn't just cost, although that was apparently the major issue as they just don't have the money. Designing a proper and effective system to manage elephants at a place like The Wilds seems to me like a logistical nightmare.
in the U.S. between 1979 and the late 1990s, over 300 people were killed by dogs. That means your family dog is much more likely to kill you than any "wild animal".
No it doesn't. There are more than 300 times as many dogs in the United States than there are moutain lions. Dogs are more dangerous because there are more of them, not because they are more dangerous per animal. Your family dog is not more likely to kill you than a mountain lion.
Now that we've gotten past that part it would be safe to say that it would be very extremely unlikely to be killed by either a dog or a mountain lion.
You're kidding, right? How is killing wolves for our own purposes any less "natural" than killing mammoths for our own purposes?
See, the problem is that nobody can ever agree on what it means to be "natural," and whether "nature" is a desirable goal in itself.
I think you hit the nail on the head. The human population in this country is the highest it's been in at least 40 years, probably much longer. Humans are venturing into forests because there's nowhere else for them to go, and it's not because we're crowding them, it's because they're crowding themselves.
Why not protect and preserve the species that are still there, along with their natural habitats?
The big reason why these species disappear is because they are sold in parts to western kapitalistic megalomaniacs, and because we otherwise manage to screw up the world in a fantastically shortsighted way. Putting up parks accross another ocean isn`t going to solve either of both, so what difference does it make?
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This is total ridiculous.
Elephants and cheetahs never lived in North America. Are they talking about Wolly Mammoth and Mastadons? Because if they are that's not the same thing.
Maybe we should just go to the zoo to see elephants, instead of dedicating land for them. Next thing you know the friends of the earth freaks will let 100 elephants loose near a major city and the spca will have to shoot them all.
Man what a great idea! And to think what worthy causes your tax dollars go to...
The creatures proposed for introduction into the American wilds are shrewdly chosen to try to re-implement the ecosystem as it stood before the first humans arrived. The suggestions serves several purposes: firstly, in a renewed ecosystem the wolves, bison, and eagles - and many other endangered animals - would find it easier to survive. Our modern, truncated ecosystems are one reason why we have trouble keeping native animals alive.
Secondly, we are establishing new breeding populations of endangered species. By giving over some of our land we put our money where our mouths are, and take some real responsibility for the long-term survival of these animals, rather than endless lecturing the 3rd world about how they need to protect biodiversity.
Lastly, the US is able to police it's wilderness areas far better than over-strapped 3rd world police, who are often corrupt, engaged in tribal warfare or terrorism, or who just plain don't care. It has been demonstrated already that the existing populations of these animals are dwindling, and we have every reason to expect that to continue. They aren't going to survive in their "native" habitats, either we make alternative arrangements for them, or we say goodbye to them.
Not that it matters. It has also been amply demonstrated that Congress wouldn't know a good idea if it up and bit them in their collective asses, Republocrat or Demolican, it makes no difference. By the time they realize the crisis is upon us, the megafauna will be gone...
All I ever seen mentioned is "the scientists". Who are these people, what training do they have? Do they have some agenda at hand beyond "conservation" (whatever that means these days). Do they have any legitimatacy, or are they just hacks?
Too many times the word "scientist" is banterred about to try to bring legitimacy to some wild claim. I'm no biologist, ecologist, etc, but I do know that just about every time we've intentionally or accidentally introduced species that aren't native to an area it's been a disaster. If you want examples, look no further than jack rabbits in Australia, zebra mussles in the great lakes, invasive algae in the mediteranean, and countless other examples.
About the only thing we have introduced to an area that hasn't been a disaster are the crops we farm. I suspect the only reason is that human influenced crops aren't hardy enough to survive on their own without us looking after them very carefully. Wild corn, or wild chickens don't seem to be taking over anywhere for instance.
Could the so-called scientists present some credentials please? This sounds more like media garbage than actual science.
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