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."
A Little Late (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I say "Go for it!"... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
What about wolves, bison, eagles? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Put the Megafauna in the Buffalo Commons? (Score:2, Interesting)
They, for one, might welcome the new megafauna theme park overlords.
Re:The Wilds (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What about wolves, bison, eagles? (Score:3, Interesting)
Eagles are too high in the area 99% of the time to attract tourists.
Bison look like hairy cows with dreadlocks. They are slow moving, typically boring, and will eat hay out of your hand if you stick it through the fence. Not much fun for tourists.
Wolves are scary -- especially at midnight when there's a full moon and on the basketball court. Michael J. Fox's relevance died in the 1980s so people wouldn't want to come and see him.
I'd be more interested in seeing them hunting free/tamper free zones for native animals.
You have a brain. These "scientists" are interested in "Jurassic Park" and they are advertising a wildlife park for tourism purposes only.
Re:Help me out here (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, here in Europe, forests are growing back and reclaiming abandoned farmland that it is no longer profitable to keep in use. People are moving into the cities, and population growth rates are negative in many countries. The changes are vast, and wolves and other larger animals that were made extinct in western Europe long ago have moved back in.
Environmentalists are not all amused, however. A lot of adapted wildlife will go bye bye along with the farmland, as new-grown, dense forests are rather inhospitable to wildlife variety.
Re:The Wilds (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Extinction (Score:2, Interesting)
Why? Isn't the present megafauna good enough? (Score:2, Interesting)
Nice try, but the real answer is reduction in human population. Both Africa and Asia have seen an explosion in their populations which have stressed animal habitats to the point of crowding species out. Oh by the way, did I mention that this would be good for global warming too?
The real question people don't bring up is whether you would like more lion or human babies this year. Every time we create more humans we're effectively saying that we don't give a shit about the lions. That's pretty much what it boils down to, lower quality of life for everyone.
Re:Help me out here (Score:2, Interesting)
Given that US population growth is comparitvely low & stable, that we have a food surplus, and that the midwest is largely an undesirable place to live - I don't forsee people flocking to these areas in desperate search for arable land anytime soon (along with poaching, the primary cause of problems in the African plains).
Re:The Wilds (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Can anybody... (Score:3, Interesting)
Animals out of their natural habitat can only lead to chaos in my (Somewhat educated, vey biased) opinion.
Re:Help me out here (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Even the scope of a buffalo commons is too huge (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with you, this makes little sense. Importing cheetahs isn't going to necessarily result in their preying on pronghorn -- whose natural predators we don't really understand. (They're an evolutionary backwater: pronghorn are way fast, can run forever unlike cheetahs who only sprint... and it's unclear what they were avoiding. Mostly they lose fawns to coyotes and that kind of thing now, but they didn't develop into such a keen little athlete surviving against coyotes or wolves. They're more than an order of magnitude faster.)
In the US, we plant a lot of Honeylocust trees. You don't see too many female specimens (they're dioecious) in people's back yard, because they have long seed pods that people regard as a mess. (Suburban nature-as-a-carpeted-living-room values -- this is how we got golf courses.)
In Africa, related species of tree have their seed spread around by elephants, mainly, but there's nothing living here to reach and munch on those pods while they're tasty. Without elephants, or mammoths or whatever, to eat them, the trees' seeds don't spread in the same way at all. They tend to stay in riverbottoms and that kind of thing, spreading just by falling, instead of traveling with herds. Or people plant them in yards -- all males. Weird.
Even just restoring that one type of tree, honeylocusts, to its original spot would have all sorts of indirect challenges and consequences. Maybe we can wishfully hope elephants would put it all right again, but no way is that true.
These people would do better to concentrate on something like the American Chestnut [forestpathology.org] -- the most important non-mast species of tree, in terms of wildlife, in the eastern US, an ideal lumber, and it's been wiped out by the blight people brought over on asiatic chestnuts for their gardens. That we could fix in real life. This is a fun premise for SciFi and Discover Magazine articles.
Re:Help me out here (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Help me out here (Score:2, Interesting)
He's living precisely in that, oh, 3000 miles between San Francisco and New York that constitutes the portion of the country that is doing exactly what he's saying. Ever driven through North Dakota, South Dakota, most of Montana, Nebraska, Kansas or any of those other states that DON'T end up as settings for TV and movies? Abandoned farms with rotting buildings are being taken over by the groves of trees originally planted as windbreaks.
It's actually a rare thing that one or both of the coasts can be used as the basis for extrapolation to what's going on in the rest of the country.
The problem is that this is happening in places that aren't "pretty" or "nice". It's happening exactly where people don't really want to hang out now that there's no gold mining or copper mining or railroad economy anymore.
Sure, it's eroding in the beautiful places, but "wilderness" and "forest" don't always look like the giant redwood forests or Glacier National Park. Instead, it's trees sprouting up where no one notices.
The simple truth is that there are more trees, white tailed deer, raccoons, Canada geese, and other non-predatory wildlife now (with a population of 300 million) than we had in 1900 (with a population of 76 million). What has decreased is the megafauna mentioned in the posting as well as predators. Why? Because most predators need wide territories in order to sustain populations. Setting aside 20,000 acres doesn't help predator populations much because, for some predators, that would only support a few of them, while it might support thousands of "prey" animals.
Re:Help me out here (Score:2, Interesting)
Look at western Nebraska, Kansas, the Dakotas, while the population is growing, in South Dakota for example the population is back to where it was in the 1920 census, the small towns which were the ranching and farming centers are dying, land is going fallow and the population increases are into the cities. For my South Dakota example, the people are moving to the Black Hills area around Rapid City and to the Sioux Falls area.
They could put big fences, walls around 100,000-200,000 acres in the middle of western Nebraska and not displace a human being.
Re:Help me out here (Score:1, Interesting)
Brings back memories, only mine was with a mountain lion, not a cougar.
She was only one year old, declawed, and part of a lion ranch near my home town in Southern California - just stone's throw from the high country next to Big Bear. My father was taking his students (high school) on a field trip, I was only 14 and along for the ride - I was also the smallest in the group.
As we were all exiting her cage I got tackled. And then played with. Like a big rag doll for kitty.
It was fun.
Re:I wonder which of these is most likely? (Score:3, Interesting)
Tiger & Big Cat Sanctuary - Arkansas (Score:3, Interesting)
He loved the place, by the way, though he much prefered the tigers' semi-playful chasing to the cougars' dead-serious stalking. The Bed & Breakfast [tigers.tc] stay is the best way to visit -- $100 a night is cheap for a B&B, and where else do you get woken up in the morning to lions roaring?
Re:The Wilds (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, a Liger is in many ways a sad, pathetic creature, bred solely for human amusement.
The folks at Turpentine Creek [tigers.tc], a big cat refuge near Eureka Springs, Arkansas, have a retired circus Liger named Jade [tigers.tc]. His story on the site is pretty cool, but when you visit in person, they'll tell you about the problems he has "fitting in". Lions and tigers just don't socialize together -- they communicate in very different ways. Jade is trapped between the world of a lion's roar and a tiger's "chuff", and doesn't seem to be understood or accepted by either. He tries to answer back to the lions and tigers around him, but it just doesn't work out.
But yeah, he does look pretty cool.
Re:Help me out here (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:The Wilds (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:A Little Late (Score:1, Interesting)
Megafauna and parasite systems (Score:1, Interesting)
For example, the trypanosome that causes African Sleeping Sickness is normally found in the bloodstream of African fauna. They are immune to it's effects. But people certainly are NOT. Not in Africa. Not in the US. And neither are North American animals immune to infection by the trypanosome.
And that's just 1 parasite system that could be transported to a new environment. There are perhaps hundreds of others.
IMHO - Bad idea.