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."

Comments

The Wilds

[rlp]

The Wilds in Cumberland, OH has 10,000 acres with African, Asian, and North American animals.

Re:The Wilds

[killmenow]

I was at The Wilds not long ago. In answer to the question: "Will you ever have Elephants here?" the guide said, "No."

She went on to explain that, although they have paddocks with high electric fences to keep their current populations where they want them, they are inadequate for elephants. In other words, electric fence or not, elephants will just roll right on through. The investment, she said, needed to implement proper barriers to keep the elephants from just trampling into whatever area of the park they so desire (and to keep them from simply exiting the park) is too cost prohibitive to make any economic sense.

So, long story short, no elephants at the wilds. She did say they were considering getting some big cats. I don't know if she meant tigers or lions or what. Personally, I hope they get ligers. They're my favorite animal.

Re:The Wilds

[Have Blue]

They're bred for their skills in magic, you know.

Re:The Wilds

[GeckoX]

It is a very neat experience to go there, especially for the kids. (Don't take your merc or bimmer though, you'll be pissed at the monkeys if you do ;)

However, it's also sad and depressing in a way. It's certainly better than seeing them cooped up in cages at a zoo, but at the same time, it is not a natural environment.

For true re-introduction of these species in North America, we would absolutely _have_ to provide an enourmous amount of space for a proper reserve to have any chance of these animals being able to exist 'in the wild'. IE, independant of reliance on humans to survive at the basic level.

Another point to be made is that we do have mega-fauna in North America that I would like to give this chance to well before I would want to see us importing animals from other continents. The North American mega-fauna that went extinct here is NOT the same as the mega-fauna that currently exists in other parts of the world.

It would be wonderful to have a massive wild reserve in North America where Grizzlies, Wolves, Buffalo and numerous other endangered North American species could actually exist in their natural state devoid of human pressure.

Re:The Wilds

[Patik]

She went on to explain that, although they have paddocks with high electric fences to keep their current populations where they want them, they are inadequate for elephants.

She's probably right. You saw what happened with the Tyrannosaurus Rex when the power went out.

Re:The Wilds

[Yaztromo]

It would be wonderful to have a massive wild reserve in North America where Grizzlies, Wolves, Buffalo and numerous other endangered North American species could actually exist in their natural state devoid of human pressure.

We have such a place. We call it "Canada".

Yaz.

Already been done

[Takehiko]

Sounds like a zoo to me...

Help me out here

[cimmer]

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?

Re:Help me out here

[hivebrain]

My vote is for Crawford, Texas.

Re:Help me out here

[SB5]

I would say Los Angeles or Washington D.C.

Both are very far from any known civilisation.

Re:Help me out here

[BradNelson]

Mrs. Sheehan is from California, not New England.

Re:Help me out here

[(H)elix1]

North America is no stranger to large, free roaming, wild cats. Most of the time, we get along just fine (read: leave each other alone).

Oh man... I was working as a cereal chemist in the summer/fall while I was on 'summer' break between my freshman and sophomore year of university. One of the things was collecting grain samples during harvest since the U of MN started later than North Dakota State University.

So I was collecting barley and wheat samples where ND, SD, and MN meet. Talked to the farmer and he pointed out the grain bin I could snag a sample. Drive out, pull out my bags, look up... and see what looked like tiger... about 300 yards out. Scrambled for my camera, but it was gone by the time I had the lens off. (better judgment off) So after a few minutes of nothing I get out of the car, climb to the top of the bin, collect my samples, and look around. No tiger. A couple more stops and I would go home for the weekend.

Walking back to the car -*POW*- I find myself face down in the dirt with something on my back purring. The lowest rumble I've ever heard/felt. Role over and am face to face with a cougar. It let me up and it is still there purring like crazy. I scratched it behind the ears like a cat.

The farmer drives up and looks with a bit of surprise. He then tells me the cougar was a pet when it was young, but broke its leg when it slid off the kitchen table. It was declawed, but (amazingly) ended up getting to big for an indoor pet even with the stunted growth. They let it go on the property. The farmer tells me usually it hides from strangers, but one of its favorite games was pounce. He shows me. Turns his back on the cat, and watched that thing go into hunt mode. Took a bunch of pictures with the cat, loaded up my samples, and about five minutes down the road just stopped the car because I was shaking so bad. Nothing like almost finding yourself lower on the food chain. The stunned silence was something else when I called in and gave a status update on how things went. Well, I got jumped by a cougar today...

Re:Help me out here

[Eightyford]

Well, I got jumped by a cougar today...

That actually happened to me a few weeks ago. It was my friends bachelor party, and I was just standing there with a Labatt's in my hand... and all of a sudden... BAM!

She made me breakfast in the morning.

Re:Help me out here

[maxpublic]

In Oregon there are quite a few mountain lions whose ranges extend into urban areas, but attacks are extremely rare. People don't even know when they're around, except perhaps when a pet goes missing. This is especially true since our forests extend right into our cities and towns; even Portland is this way (and is large enough to have its own internal forests). A cougar can be hiding in a clump of bushes along your property line as you're walking from the house to your car in the morning and you'll never know it's there.

About a month ago I encountered a cougar that was crouched along the edge of a nearby forest (about forty feet from the nearest building). I see all sorts of other animals in that area, but the cougar was a real surprise; I was in the area, about twenty-five feet from the cougar, for about five minutes before I noticed that the forest line didn't look quite right. Stared at it for a bit and finally made out the head and ears. It was just watching me, apparently waiting for me to leave so it could continue on it's merry way. It noticed that I had seen it and froze with a wide-eyed "oh shit!" look and since I didn't want him to panic I backed out of the area and left. I wasn't concerned since mountain lion attacks are extremely rare, and when they do happen it's almost always when the animal has the element of surprise, which this one clearly didn't.

Haven't seen him since, but that doesn't mean he isn't around. There've been fewer deer coming by so I think he's still in the general area. In any event, it's common for cougars to be near and for people to walk right by them without noticing them because they're so good at remaining hidden. Nothing to be alarmed about.

Max

I wonder which of these is most likely?

[Alranor]

parks could be set up as breeding sanctuaries

vs

It's coming right for us! Quick Ned, shoot it

Re:I wonder which of these is most likely?

[Pollardito]

it's fun to discuss breeding sanctuaries on Slashdot. once they've solved the problem of the declining populations of African and Asian animals, will they tackle the breeding problem among the rare American Nerd? our population is strugging right now, they've already had to start importing more of us from Asia and Africa to sustain the population. maybe they could build sanctuaries for us in the wilds of Africa

What?!

[Shky]

Has nobody seen Jurassic Park?!

Re:What?!

[SFA_AOK]

Or, as I like to call it: Billy and the Cloneasaurus.

Re:What?!

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Has nobody seen Jurassic Park?!

Hey, anything that eats lawyers is fine with me.

A Little Late

[MooseByte]

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.

Re:A Little Late

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

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.

Re:A Little Late

[zxnos]

since we are being pedantic about, and my people (Lakota) were here before the people who named them bison, it is actually Tatanka.

Re:A Little Late

[zippthorne]

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.

CNN's AP story

[Webs 101]

Yahoo has the reuters wire story; CNNN has AP's:

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."

Re:CNN's AP story

[grasshoppa]

"Lions eat people," he said. "There has to be a pretty serious attitude shift on how you view predators."

That, my friend, is what I call a selling point.

I'm picturing a service, we'll call it Rent-A-Lion, where in you hire the services of a lion for the afternoon. Now, say you have a boss who's a prick or you just know an asshole who needs a good eatin', you just park this lion in their house and wait.

Brilliant I tell you. As an added bonus, there's always the possibility that the lion would eat the evidence.

What about wolves, bison, eagles?

[caffiend666]

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.

Re:Can anybody...

[SanityInAnarchy]

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.

Re:Can it even work?

[timster]

What if the extinction of some species causes that "cure" species to evolve to fill the niche?

Let's stop the ecological guessing games.

Re:Can anybody...

[CaptDeuce]

LOL yesterday I saw this [Yahoo] article. Lions and People Killing Each Other in Tanzania.

Funny how you failed to point out the reason:

Researchers conclude that bush pigs, an agricultural pest that drives out zebra, impala and other natural lion prey, are to blame.
The lions enter villages searching for pigs and end up attacking people.

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.

Re:Can anybody...

[Trigun]

Welcome to the United States of America, pop. 1.3 Million smart people.

Quick reality check

[WheelDweller]

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!....

Re:Quick reality check

[Shotgun]

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?

You see, the thing you forget is that the mammoth was killed off by overhunting from pre-historic men. Since men aren't natural, expecially the prehistoric type, we have to undo anything they've done. The world has to exist as if men were never here, because men are evil and vile.

Death to the human race (except for me, of course) so that the world can be a natural place!!

Re:Can anybody...

[Mr. Cancelled]

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)=

A friend's comment:

[jkujawa]

"Just like rabbits in Australia -- but bigger! And carnivorous!"

Re:Why don't

[suitepotato]

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.

Re:We should slaughter the ones we have left!

[lucabrasi999]

Mountain lions attack and kill bikers on nature trails. Alligators drag children and dogs, and even adults to their deaths. Why are we putting up with this?

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.

15 ft high wall? Like Palestine?

[Simonetta]

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.

Re:Can anybody...

[mrchaotica]

Hey, there are smart people here in the Bible Belt too!

(We're being held hostage -- help!)