[The disappearance of very large animals in North Amerca in the last 13,000 year has] left glaring gaps in the complex web of interactions, upon which a healthy ecosystem depends. The pronghorn, for example, has lost its natural predator and only its startling speed - of up to about 60mph - hints at its now forgotten foe.
By introducing living counterparts to the extinct animals, the researchers say, these voids could be filled. So, by introducing free-ranging African cheetahs to the Southwest, strong interactions with pronghorns could be restored, while providing cheetahs with a new habitat.
Other living species that could "stand in" for Pleistocene-era animals in North America include feral horses (Equus caballus), wild asses (E. asinus), Bactrian camels (Camelus bactrianus), Asian (Elephas maximus) and African (Loxodonta africana) elephants and lions (Panthera leo).
"Obviously, gaining public acceptance is going to be a huge issue, especially when you talk about reintroducing predators," said lead author Josh Donlan, of Cornell University. "There are going to have to be some major attitude shifts. That includes realising predation is a natural role, and that people are going to have to take precautions."
Crazy! Or do I just have an attitude problem?
UPDATE: More on the subject from Tim Worstall and Glenn Reynolds.
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28 comments:
apart from practical considerations, I see no problem with this idea.
On the other hand, practical considerations are fucking huge. Do you want cheetah's chasing down your car on the interstate?
Our society is not built to handle large wild populations of predators. In the past what we've always done is kill them all.
I've been wondering about that scene in Six Feet Under where the death-du-jour is caused by someone being attacked by a big cat (cheetah?). So, I guess the idea is that this sort of thing would occur more frequently. And how would people adapt to this new threat? Would we all start carrying rifles around for protection? Or would we flock to big cities, on the assumption that there would be fewer wild asses there than in more suburban or rural communities?
I agree with you Ann. It is crazy.
It's not nice to fool Mother Nature.
It's not nice to fool Mother Nature
Perhaps we could separate a group of children and raise them (intentionally as opposed to the more common negligent barbarian raising) as barbarians. We could reinstate them as Vikings, Visigoths, Vandals, etc. -- sort of a Dark Ages re-wilding. Oh wait... we already have that and much of the civilized world (make that Pronghorns) is going to be dragged down and eaten because we've forgotten how to deal with predators.
Hmmmm....
Cheetahs would be cool. Running with my car across Arizona on I-40 them going 70 mph and me going 80. It might cut down on hitchhiking though.
Did anybody else thing of Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle immediately upon reading this? Anyone? Anyone?
How about "12 Monkeys."
Ann,
There is actually something deep going on here. In general, ecologists have said, "When living things exist together for long periods without humans, they develop all sorts of interdependencies and produce something greater than themselves: "a healthy ecosystem." When humans come along and change things, they make it unhealthy. Making it healthy then consists of making it as much as possible like it was before humans came along.
Add to this the fact that humans in the Americas killed off an extraordinary variety of large animals at the end of the last Ice Age, and it is only logical to say that it is necesssary to replace them to restore "health."
Such a concept of health may sound crazy, and perhaps it is, but it is part of the unexamined mental furniture of most people in natural history--and just about everyone in the community of environmental activists.
If you are interested in the sartorial accomplishments of the emperor, ask why it is "unhealthy" to have fast-running pronghorns without fast-running predators and you will be told (after separating out the verbiage), "because it wasn't that way before humans came along."
Well put, Roger. Wouldn't it mean that we humans also need some predators running after us?
Amazing - how can I get paid to come up with thoughtful but stupid ideas like this?? I sure have an endless supply of stupid ideas.
And remember these ideas are from the same crowd that wants to take away your right to smoke, be obese, etc. BUT they see no problem if one of their predators eats you.
This reminds me of the scene in "Defending your Life" when Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep are in the past lives pavilion and Streep asks Brooks who he was (he was being chased by a lion) and he answers "lunch!"
It would be a good place for PETA and ALF to put their theories to test.
Nature: Red in tooth and claw
Not crazy, just faith-based.
If human beings are merely another naturally-evolved animal, what we do is as natural as what any other evolved animal does. The logically necessary counterpart to declaring human actions to be "artificial" (or "unnatural") is the declaration that humans are not natural beings, but supernatural ones. Which is inherently a religious position.
Now, of course, there are two major sub-varieties of this religious doctrine. The first holds that man has a right to fill the earth and subdue it; in this case, the only ways human action can be bad is if they either hurt supernatural beings (including humans) or defy the will of some other supernatural beings that should be obeyed (like a god).
The second manifestation is that supernatural interference with nature is wrong -- call it the anti-Gnostic position, since the Gnostics believed the material world was evil and the spirit good. This manifestation has its own major sub-sects. The first is that the road to righteousness is for supernatural beings to cease interfering with Nature, period; the second is that supernatural beings should repair the damage they've done as best they can, and then cease interfering with Nature.
The Pleistocene re-wilders are, obviously, members of the restorationist sect of the Antignostic religion. By the tenents of their religion, the reasoning behind their position is absolutely sane; from most other sets of premises, of course, it will look crazy.
(Of course, they'll deny that their position is religious, but then they'll have a hard time explaining waht makes extinction-by-humans any less natural than, say, the extinction of the South American marsupials at the teeth of North American placental animals before humanity existed. Generally, they'll do this by rejecting the label supernatural while still treating intelligence as if it were a supernatural attribute.)
"And remember these ideas are from the same crowd that wants to take away your right to smoke, be obese, etc. BUT they see no problem if one of their predators eats you."
And yet, if you smoke, you're more likely to be caught by the predator, and if you're obese, there's more of you for the predator to eat. ;-)
Also, my friends and I were talking about this story at dinner tonight, and we realized what the newest rural teenage fad would be if this came to pass: Lion-tipping!
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
I'm reminded of those wise words of Krusty the Clown: "Guns are for self-defense, hunting dangerous and delicious animals, and keeping
the king of England out of your face."
Dang tootin'. Step off my grill, g'rilla, and YOU keep back, too, bony prince Charlie. I've got the drop on both of yez.
I've wanted to hunt dangerous game in Africa ever since I was a kid reading Peter Capstick, Robert Ruark, Hemingway, etc. I, for one, would relish the opportunity to hunt lion and elephant without the trouble and extreme expense (not to mention exposure to unstable political systems, nasty diseases, a wide variety of venemous snakes, etc.) entailed in a trip to Africa. If they brought in Cape buffalo, leopards and rhinos, it'd be downright perfect -- though, somehow, I don't think these people would approve of my plan to hunt their imports. (That of course would be rather hypocritical of them, since "predation is a natural role.")
But hunting opportunities aside, it's not intuitively obvious to me that making this country more like Africa would be a good thing . . .
Of course it's crazy, Ann!
Ms. Althouse,
Actually, I think this suggestion is more pernicious than has been suggested by many of the commenters. We are able to live on the standard we do because we have successfully subdued our environment. Food production, transportation, energy, etc. are available to us in fairly abundant quantities because their generation isn't a life threatening activity. Of course, in a world where predators, or even unintentionally destructive animals like elephants are free to roam at will, that danger level goes up by an order of magnitude. Econ 101 dictates that the result will be diminished availability of most resources. The diminished availability of resources would, I'm afraid to say, end up in people dying for lack of basic needs.
Jeeez, folks ... with the exception of SVJim's comment about Ithaca (I'm in favor of pretty much anything you could do to Ithaca) I think you're getting a little overwrought here.
First of all, there's probably 200,000 square miles or more of land out here in the Great Plans that is either no longer of any use, or is being used to grow price-supported crops that have become sinecures for agrobusinesses. Why not put it to some amusing use? I personally would like to see buffalo herds that go to the horizon for a man on horseback, like my great grandfather did.
Second, it's not like we don't have largish predators out here already. Okay, no lions, but we've got hard winters out here --- I don't think lions do well in three feet of snow.
"Pleistocene Park" sounds like fun to me.
kparker,
Personally, I was thinking of this kind of precaution. Of course it'd require a second mortgage, but what the heck . . .
As far as Charles and his land 'no longer of any use'? Oh, God...
The idea of taking species from another continent and putting them here to try and replace NOW species that became extinct a long damn time ago in an environment that no longer exists... as someone once put it, Hell no!
Especially since the idiots proposing this would insist the critters not be molested no matter how many of us lousy humans were stomped/gored/eaten.
I recall an early skull showing damage that was attributed to humanoid-on-humanoid violence. Tsk-tsk. Then someone had the bright idea of fitting the holes to leopard canine teeth, and found a perfect match. Even today, they prey on humans, especially infants and children. Let's not borrow trouble. Elephants, horses, camels, and cheetahs have all learned to live with us, though, and would be decent candidates for introduction.
More to the point, what are the prospects for getting some of the great apes into New World tropical habitats? We would not have the shaky pretense of Pleistocene rehabilitation, but it would at least give them a second chance.
well how 'bout this. If repredication is OK because it is "natural" then wouldn't we also support the repredication of large cities like New Your? After all, preditory crimes were more common during the Dinkins et al days and the left denies that governmental/social policies were at fault. So it must have been the natural way we animals, no different from other animals per the Darwin-left, would behave without political/social interference.
Ever since we got married my wife wouldn't let me have a reaaly big rifle on the grounds that there's nothing 'round here to shoot with something that big and expensive. When even reloads or handloads cost over two dollars per round, well, she's one the argument.
Go ahead and import the big critters, I've been wanting a Ruger Model 77 in .416 Rigby forever.
One consequence would be that we would all pack heat when going abroad outside the city walls. Make for a much more peaceful country.
Perhaps we could use this as a cheap form of border control? If we introduce some large predators along the border, we would be assured of only receiving the finest and fleetest of foot of illegal immigrants.
And then perhaps on some of our more liberal campuses to weed out the slower and more unhealthy professors. Tenure just got a brand new pair of gym shoes baby!
Sounds almost like Jurassic Park, but it doesn't seem too far-fetched.
I've posted my own impressions on this story at my new blog www.architectureandmorality.blogspot.com in response to Tim Worstall's article at Tech Central Station.
Goody. It's happening already then. Now if we could just "re-wild" Cambridge.
I wouldn't mind seeing Cheeta's, but would anyone seriously think about reintroducing elephants into an environment they don't currently inhabbit? Elephants modify the environment almost as destructively as humans do, and fences don't work.
I haven't had time to read all of the posts, so if I repeat someone else's comments, it is by accident.
This sounds like someone's pipedream (or is that a bong dream?).
Have we heard of the concept of unintended consequences?
When the large mammals disappeared during the Late Pleistocene from North America, the pertinent ecosystems did not remain static, they continued to change through natural processes and by human influences. You just can't take exotic animals from another continent and "plug them into" these ecosystems. What is this going to do to our existing mammal and other remaining wild populations? Will prairie dogs know how to deal with hyenas?
I will have to do some more reading, but I think this is a really bad idea.
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