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Elephants, lions, cheetahs and camels
could one day roam the western US under a proposal to
recreate North American landscapes as they existed more
than 13,000 years ago, when humans first encountered
them.
The plan, proposed in a commentary in
Nature and co-authored by 13 ecologists and conservation
biologists, would help enrich a North American ecosystem
that was left almost devoid of large mammals at the
end of the Pleistocene period. It would also help preserve
wildlife that faces the threat of extinction in Africa
and Asia.
(Tony's note: I wouldn't be
violently opposed to this if they allowed hunters to
hunt these non-native animals! Fat chance of that...)
Between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago,
97 of 150 genera of large mammals disappeared from around
the world. Although a warming climate played its part,
the consensus is that over-hunting by humans probably
had a significant role.
In North America, by about 13,000 years
ago, humans were leaving evidence of big-game hunting
using sophisticated stone tools. This hunting probably
helped to drive many animals to extinction, including
North American mammoths and mastodons, lions, cheetahs,
camelops (a relative of the modern camel), horses and
asses.
50-year plan
Although those animals are gone forever,
related African and Asian species could serve as proxies,
the authors say. They propose introducing the animals
over 50 years, starting with horses, asses and camels,
working up to elephants, and finally bringing in the
big cats.
Eventually, the animals could roam in
preserves hundreds of thousands of hectares in size.
The best place to create this “Pleistocene Park”
would be in the North American Great Plains, where the
human population is relatively low and the grazing animals
would have a ready supply of food.
But other conservationists think it
is a bad idea. Chris Haney, a conservation biologist
at Defenders of Wildlife in Washington, DC, US, says
that substituting modern equivalents of extinct species
will not be the same as restoring the ancient ecosystem.
And he thinks it would detract from more pressing and
“realistic” goals, such as restoring wolves,
grizzlies, elk and other animals to their historic North
American ranges. Even those reintroductions have faced
bitter opposition from ranchers, farmers, and residents.
"I need to work on wolves, not
mastodons," agrees Douglas Inkley, senior science
adviser to the National Wildlife Federation in Reston,
Virginia, US.
Journal reference: Nature (vol 436,
p 913)
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