Pleistocene Park?

[Joe Botting]

Alright, so it's a long way from my normal posts, but this is something important enough that it's got to be worth discussing anyway.

You may have heard about the plans by conservationists and biologists to reintroduce 'ice-age equivalent' wildlife back into North America (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/0817_050817_animal_park.html). This means lions, cheetahs and elephants roaming the great plains, as they did until only thirteen thousand years ago. Re-introduction of locally extinct creatures is starting to become very widespread, but is this going too far? Would it just encourage America's Big Game tradition, or are there real benefits for both humans and the natural ecology?

It would be great to hear from any Americans that may be reading this, but the same principles apply to the rest of us. Would you be comfortable with lions in the Yorkshire Dales, or elephants in the Bavarian forests? Would it just be too dangerous to bring Europeans and these creatures back together again?

I've got mixed views on this, so I'd be very interested to hear everyone's thoughts...

Joe

[Ormrod]

Meddling rarely works and although Pleistocene Park is not a particularly likely scenario, surely more good will be done by protecting and conserving the present rather than trying to change the past. That said, it is not quite as cut and dries as it may seem; a prime example being the conserving of the red kite an reintroducing it into areas where it had been wiped out. Most of us are, at heart Nimbys, and few would be prepared to change of modify their habits to fit in with the needs of wildlife or landscape. So my thoughts would be treasure what we still have and hope for a due balance of common sense and rationality to put beside these idealistic but not very realistic plans. Head and heart have got to work together to preserve and conserve the planet.
Ormrod

[Joe Botting]

Hi Ormrod,
Thanks for the thoughtful response. As you say, it's difficult to see the point at which a laudable plan like red kite reintroduction becomes OTT. I can see the conservation arguments in favour of establishing widespread populations of currently threatened creatures (in particular), especially given the potential climatic changes that are brewing... but on the other hand, there have been so many cases of introduction of a species going horribly wrong, that we have to be extremely cautious.
The superficially obvious response seems to me to be to accept reintroduction but not introduction. But then, we can never introduce the same local population and therefore guarantee precisely the same behaviour etc., because (a) they're extinct, and no two populations are likely to be identical and (b) the environment itself has changed in their absence...
Take wolves in Scotland. We could reintroduce them, and yes, they would take some sheep. But now that there are so many more sheep (in some areas; but probably many fewer in the Highlands than at the maximum during the height of the clearances), would they prefer them to deer? Would they instead start moving towards the more populated areas?
Don't know. I'm one of the people who thinks we should certainly put up with some changes in our environment if those changes are genuinely beneficial for the local ecology. But then, what does 'beneficial' mean? Is it entirely an artificial perspective, or is diversity fundamentally 'good'?

Joe