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Cornell researchers challenge Cornell-led proposal to stock U.S. plains with lions and elephants

July 20, 2006

Krishna Ramanujan
ksr32@cornell.edu

Introducing lions, cheetahs, elephants, camels and other large non-indigenous animals to the U.S. Great Plains and Southwest -- a plan proposed in the journal Nature last year -- wouldn't work, several Cornell researchers argue. Such animals would be unlikely to thrive and could seriously threaten indigenous species and ecosystems, they say.

The original proposal, called Pleistocene rewilding and published by another group of researchers from Cornell and other institutions, suggested introducing close relatives or ecological counterparts to such species as mammoths, saber-toothed tigers and North American cheetahs, which roamed the North American plains during the Pleistocene era but were driven to extinction 10,000 years ago by humans. Introducing related species could fill vacant niches and revitalize ecosystems that have suffered from the extinctions, the researchers proposed.

The proposal's challengers, who recently published their paper in Biological Conservation, argue that plants that support the food web in the Great Plains region and the Southwest have evolved and changed irrevocably over the past 10,000 years without the large herbivores and predators that once influenced these ecosystems. Adding exotic proxy species now would not restore the gaps from 10,000 years ago.

Full article here:

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/July06/RewildingRedux.kr.html