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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
Has nobody seen Jurassic Park?!
CC Licensed Serialized Story and Podcast: Ingenioustries
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.
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!
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
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)=
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.