Reintroduce Megafauna to North America? 855
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 (Score:5, Informative)
Old news, really (Score:3, Informative)
I'd Google for more references, but I have a plane to catch...
Climate (Score:3, Informative)
Elephants may be able to handle it through sheer size, but lions have no adaptations for cold. Nor do cheetahs.
Zoos and free-animal parks provide shelter that wild animals wouldn't have.
Megafauna might mean mega-problems (Score:3, Informative)
On the other hand, it seems like every time we introduce a non-native bit of flora and fauna to the North American landscape we end up with those jumping fish in the Mississippi river or kudzu all over everything in the South or
Outside of a very restricted park environment I can see a serious potential for tragedy here.
Re:Help me out here (Score:3, Informative)
North America is no stranger to large, free roaming, wild cats. [wikipedia.org] Most of the time, we get along just fine (read: leave each other alone).
Species reintroductions elsewhere (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What about wolves, bison, eagles? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:A Little Late (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A Little Late (Score:3, Informative)
Buffalo are "Bubalus arnee", Bison are "Bison bison". They're both bovines, but that's where their similarity ends. It'd be like calling a cow a buffalo.
Buffalo: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/3 3/Indonesia-Bull.jpg/180px-Indonesia-Bull.jpg [wikimedia.org]
Bison: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8 d/American_bison.jpg/200px-American_bison.jpg [wikimedia.org]
As you can see, they don't look anything alike.
Re:Help me out here (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A Little Late (Score:3, Informative)
European explorers gave the American bison the name of buffalo. They thought they looked like cattle. The French called them les boeufs. English explorers mispronounced that as "labuff" or "buffle." Eventually, everyone's just calling them Buffalo.
Where I live (South Dakota) there are at least 4 major herds in the relatively near vicinity. (2 public herds, two private) Everybody and their dog knows the "official" name is bison, but everyone calls them buffalo.
Re:Help me out here (Score:3, Informative)
Where I'm from, several people have lost pets to those things. While it's true that pumas (we call them mountian lions here) are generally afraid of humans, the ones that live close to populated areas tend to get too used to humans and lose there natural fear of humans. This is when they can become dangerous. Several people in Colorado have been attacked by them over the years.
Re:We should slaughter the ones we have left! (Score:3, Informative)
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!
Re:Help me out here (Score:1, Informative)
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).
This is true. I hike in Mountain Lion territory all the time. The vast majority of the time, people and lions keep to themselves. On the extremely rare occation where they don't however, something very bad happens either to the person or the cat.
Folks have been mauled/killed not terribly far from me, and every now and then the villagers gather torches and pitchforks to go kill a/some/all lions.
Horse manure (Score:3, Informative)
Belief is nice, but often facts smack it upside the ass. North America had mammoths, mastodons, sabre-toothed tigers [google.com], camels, and -- yes -- horses [plosjournals.org]. In fact, horses evolved in North America [humboldt.edu] and only later spread to Eurasia. The locals went extict 11,000 years ago.
As far as we know, native North American horses were never domesticated. The domesticable wild mustangs were just feral horses brought over by the conquistadors.
Re:Help me out here (Score:1, Informative)
Re:A Little Late (Score:2, Informative)
We should instead call this species by their proper name, which is whatever the first human to North America 20,000+ years ago called them.
Re:The Wilds (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Help me out here (Score:3, Informative)
Cougars and mountain lions are regional names for the same animal, Felix concolor. Also, "panther".
Ah, Cornell (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Help me out here (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Help me out here (Score:3, Informative)