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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."
The Wilds in Cumberland, OH has 10,000 acres with African, Asian, and North American animals.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Sounds like a zoo to me...
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?
parks could be set up as breeding sanctuaries
vs
It's coming right for us! Quick Ned, shoot it
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.
Has nobody seen Jurassic Park?!
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So 13,000 years after relatives of these megafauna disappeared from North America, they want to import their cousins?
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? And if so why stop there? I'm sure Velociraptors wandered Texas long ago.
Now if they wanted to bring back to vast herds of buffalo, sure.
Then we can just let Darwin take care of the rest.
Because, you know, some people out there actually think this might be a good idea.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/08/17/wild.am erica.ap/index.html
The AP story ends with this memorable quote:
Donlan concedes that lions would be a tough sell to Americans.
"Lions eat people," he said. "There has to be a pretty serious attitude shift on how you view predators."
"Even for Slashdot, that was a very obscure reference!" - Anonymous Coward
We have enough problems keeping the native species alive. Yes, it's important to save these animals, but should we be putting more effort into saving the animals than we put into bringing animals here from half a world away? I'd be more interested in seeing them hunting free/tamper free zones for native animals.
Here's to losing my Karma Bonus again....
How many human deaths will occur due to maulings once this is implemented.
Not nearly enough to justify the inevitable media outrage, but hopefully enough to severely reduce the number of stupid people in the country.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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.
I think it should be fine as long as they don't bring in any gigafauna.
;)
Am I the only person here who's never heard of "megafauna" before, and thinks it's a funny word?
Especially considering how well they are managing the nature wildlife such as deer in my area (NJ). I can hardly wait until I have hordes of Elephants eating my garden.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Funny how you failed to point out the reason:
As is often the case, the problem is simple -- though by no means necessarily easy to solve: control the pigs. What's really "funny" is that as the supposedly most intelligent species on the planet, humans actually create a problem (indirectly or not) then fail to address it. Let's hope that they can control pigs.
Sorry but I got to say it: the Tanzanians have made their beds, now they have to lion them.
"Where's my other sock?" - A. Einstein
Welcome to the United States of America, pop. 1.3 Million smart people.
Is this the same crew who was pushing for reanimation of that wooly mammoth a while back?
If these animals died out 13,000 years ago, doesn't the secular world view this as a mistake on the part of natural selection? Are we really going to second-guess that?
'Cause if we are, I'm gonna lobby for bigger guns and trample-insurance.
Ya know, there needs to be just one "idiot" packaged with all these overeducated intellectuals to put the brakes on now and then. 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?
Ya never see these people trying to reanimate the sabre-tooth tiger....wouldn't that be earnest, thoughtful re-instatement of missing species? Hey! Let's make a dragon!....
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but hopefully enough to severely reduce the number of stupid people in the country.
So basically you're planning on turning the Bible Belt into a wild animal sanctuary?
I'm down with that! 8)=
Jurassic Park involves dinosaurs. This involves moving modern mammals, no doubt including large numbers of apes, to the U.S. in an era when Bush has decided to restart nuclear weapons research and countries like Iran would rather put up with the sanctions than be denied the one sure thing that stops the U.S. deciding you're evil and invading.
How could apes and nuclear war be bad? There's plenty of planet for everyone.
"Just like rabbits in Australia -- but bigger! And carnivorous!"
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.
I don't see megafauna as reproducing all willy-nilly and doing so without people noticing. Not too hard to track a big cat the size of a pony or an elephant almost twice normal size and covered in fur. We're not talking insects or kudzu, we're talking big arse creatures.
What gets to me is that this is the shotgun method of protecting wildlife. Reproduce it en masse and numbers will take care of it. Not going to happen. Impact on wildlife will be made less when we stop chowing up the countryside to put in homes because we want not only new houses but new land too. We've got plenty of cities and suburbs chock full of disused and underused land where new buildings could easily replace old, where we can easily with modern technology put in efficient dense housing that won't become slums if we truly don't want them to...
Instead we demolish farmland and forest, put in subdivisions, subdivide the properties over the decades and make it denser, then leave it behind as too old and we chow up some other forest or farm and put in another subdivision. In CT in the USA, the woods in the western hills are being sliced through at an alarming rate for the middle exec level wealthy who work in the white collar city jobs and commute home to $1M+ homes that are built up into the woods and across former farms. Meanwhile the cities they work in are falling apart and full of six-family apartments that are boarded up and with a little investment and hard work could be made into fairly spacious single-family townhouses right there.
Most of these people will as they and their kids get older simply move on the ever "newer" developments, fleeing from the cities while continuing to work in them or in office parks on the immediate periphery, fueling the developers who keep grinding the countryside up and leaving us with decreasing space for the wildlife.
Here, that is the major issue. That is what is destroying the environment. Clearing of wild places to put in expensive houses, all the societal support things that go with them, roads to get there, etc. Meanwhile we're wrongly concerned with old things like mining and so on. Those are fanciful targets of the usual socialist suspects. I'm not, I live in a city, and there's plenty of good space still here just waiting to be improved on for the good of anyone living here. But people refuse to even consider it, leave it to the poor, and move on to their formaly wild now suburban confines comfortably far from the "old places" but still near enough to make money off of them.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
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.
Mountain lions have moved into San Jose. You know, that wilderness just outside Milpitas and Mountain View. Coyotes have been seen in San Francisco. Nature has this habit of adapting.
And there are very, very few relatives of mountain lions in Florida. They're called panthers, and they're just about extinct. Count yourself very luck to see one, ever. However, there are alligators all over. Check out the University of Florida's campus sometime. Over 40k resident students and you'll still see alligators in the ponds. Even with the rampant drunkenness, people manage not to be killed.
These animals rarely cause problems. They're afraid of people. We're fairly large, loud, and travel in packs. You only need to worry when you're alone, physically hurt, or obviously frightened (before you see the animal).
Wild pigs, on the other hand, are aggressive. They're non-native, invasive, and damned yummy. Whee!
I'd like to petafauna myself, but they keep running away.
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!" -- George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
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.
As you can see, they don't look anything alike.
A moot point. I bet they both taste like chicken...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Maybe they should move some of these elephants to Palestine, since the Israelis have built a 2-foot thick - 15-foot high wall around the place already.
Hey, there are smart people here in the Bible Belt too!
(We're being held hostage -- help!)
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