Will lions and elephants roam North America?

Academics at Cornell University say they've come up with a way to restore the ecological balance of North American grasslands: let some cheetahs loose.

Josh Donlon, a graduate student in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, is the lead author on a paper proposing a program under which wild African animals such as lions, elephants and cheetahs could be introduced onto large swaths of private land in the middle of the country.

These animals would essentially fill in the role once played by the megafauna from the Pleistocene era, which started around 1.8 million years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago.

During that era, the extinct American cheetah (Acinonyx trumani) likely fed on the pronghorn, a fast antelope that has flourished in the absence of predators. Other living species with counterparts to Pleistocene-era animals from North America include feral horses, wild asses, Bactrian camels, lions and Asian and African elephants.

While some obvious dangers exist, the program could also produce a number of benefits. For one thing, large animals have largely disappeared from most areas of the world due to hunting and the creep of civilization.

"If we only have 10 minutes to present this idea, people think we're nuts," Harry Greene, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell, said in a prepared statement. "But if people hear the one-hour version, they realize they haven't thought about this as much as we have. Right now, we are investing all of our megafauna hopes on one continent--Africa."

Second, releasing predators back to the wild could help reset the environmental balance. Often, the disappearance of a predator will lead to changes that can reduce biodiversity.

For example, in the U.S., the near eradication of wolves and bears led to a population boom for elk. Because elk feed on willows, their increased feeding has led to a precipitous decline in the beaver population because beavers use willows for food as well as building material for dams.

The authors also theorized that introducing these animals in the wild could create quite a few adventure tourism jobs in the southwest and plains states.

A pilot study will test the rewilding notion by releasing the endangered Bolson tortoise on a private ranch in New Mexico. The tortoise, which can weigh up to 100 pounds and once thrived in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Mexico, now only survives in a small area of northern Mexico.

[Andrew J Glina]

Dangerous

As the article mentions the change in population of a single species can alter the balance of many others. Bringing in another to solve the problem can cause just as much trouble. In Queensland, Australia, the cane fields were having trouble controling an beetle, so a toad was intoduced to control it. However it not only had no interest in its job, it also spread, killing many native species due to its poisonous skin.

[Earl Benser]

The cane toad isn't the only one...

... the idiot that though rabbits were cute or good
eating or something and brought some to Australia
should have been hung about midway to Sidney. Most
people haven't any idea what a 'rabbit proof fence' is,
other than the title of a movie. If history has taught us
anything,it should have been that man should never
mess with the local ecology. No new plants, no new
insects, no new animals, no environmental
modifications. If you don't like the land the way it is,
move on. Once you try to adjust Mother Nature, she'll
harpoon you with a mighty shaft.

Even trying to 'restore' an ecology is dangerous,
because you just can't get the mix right. These mental
midgets proposing to introduce alien megafauna to
the US plains can't see past the end of their fantasy.

[rodtrent]

10 minutes is all you need...

10 minutes is all you really need to realize these folks are nuts.

[aabcdefghij987654321]

Plan based on ignorance

This is the latest brainchild of the same people who proposed taking down the fences of abandoned farms in the midwest and returning the land to the bison.
After all, they've heard about how so many families have left farming so obviously those farms must be abandoned.

It's plainly obvious these people have never done any actual research into whats going on, it's true that there are far fewer families farming land these days but it's also true that the same land that was being farmed is still being farmed. A simple check of the size of tractors and implements used for farming would provide all the evidence needed, one farmer now usually farms all the land that nearly a dozen families used to farm.

All those abandoned farms these people are looking to use simply don't exist but they're too blind to the obvious to actually look and see what's truly going on.

[duerra]

How about Hunting?

Instead of releasing possibly dangerous animals with unknown effects into the wild, why not make licenses for things like hunting elk cheaper?

[ajbright]

can't wait

to find out how well African lions, let alone elephants, fair with harsh mid-west winters.. no doubt they've thought this one thru though.

As for dangerous, not really, the big cats that got released by bankrupt zoos in the UK have shown that they don't feed on humans, at least not if any other choice is available to them.

To start with they won't go near even farm animals unless there's no wildlife for them to feed on.

The idea that they'd be stalking kids in playgrounds is ludicrous.

But having said all that I don't see how animals whose evoluntionary makeup has adapted them to the extreme heat of Africa would cope with the much cooler temperatures in the part of the US they propose we migrate them to.

I suppose they'd naturally move south, to more familiar climates, but this then raises the question of what wildlife they be able to find as suitable prey.

When the suitable prey runs out, then the fear of encountering humans becomes secondary and domestic animals (farm animals such as cattle and sheep, not dogs and cats) would be next on their shopping list.

Only if there were neither wild prey to feed on, or farmed animals would they even attempt to look at even isolated human communities as food.

So in the end if the cold doesn't get them, the lack of food probably will, which is why this idea is stupid.

And that's without even considering more complex environmental problems.

Messing With Mother Nature

This is the kind of idiocy that gives science a bad name. Those animals went extinct in north america thousands of years ago as nature intended. It is the hight of arrogance to think that man can and should reverse the course of nature.

[Earl Benser]

Nature didn't have ....

.... a lot to do with it. Early American's ate the big animals.
Essentially, man hunted his way east and south until he ran out of
big prey or land or both. That's when the fishing and agriculture
had to start, and did. ANd the successful southern and eastern
population groups pushed the rest out into the relatively barren
mid-continent. After all, the Apaches aren't out in the desert
because they want to be.