Don’t
give me a home where the hippopotami
roam
Jamie
Rowe
Lions
and tigers and bears — oh my! Toto,
I’ve a feeling we’re not
in Kansas anymore.
Or are we? If some ecologists had their way, Auntie Em and Uncle Henry’s
farm would be an African big game reserve where Toto would be running from
lions instead of Miss Gulch.
According to an Associated Press article, this radical new idea came from a
retreat at Ted Turner’s Ladder Ranch in New Mexico. Turner isn’t
just a media mogul — he’s a conservationist and has set up the
Turner Endangered Species Fund.
The fund’s projects range from wolves to pine trees, from the East Coast
to the Midwest. Its work is important and valuable in that it’s attempting
to fix the damage humans have done to the ecosystems of the United States.
But the idea of introducing elephants, lions and other African big game to
the Great Plains is just ridiculous.
The reasoning behind this plan is to help prevent the species from going extinct.
The scientists fear extinction might happen on the African continent thanks
to poor protection from poachers and loss of habitat. They also want to help
recreate the biodiversity of the North American continent.
The African nations can’t protect the animals because they are dealing
with too many other problems, such as war and famine. The United States should
be helping the African governments with these problems as well as providing
protection and habitats for the species. The entire continent lacks money thanks
to colonization of European nations in centuries past. But that’s all
a topic for another column.
My major beef is with this proposition of recreating a biodiversity of a time “before
humans overran the landscape.”
What biodiversity is this you ask? It’s a biodiversity including mastodons,
camels and saber-toothed cats, all ancestors to the African elephant and lions.
These creatures, and many more, lived all over the North American continent
during the last ice age, which ended 10,000 years ago. They slowly died out,
thanks to numerous factors including hunting by humans and a changing climate.
The scientists think bringing lions and elephants to the plains will restore
the biodiversity of the ice ages. The problem here is we are in an interglacial
period, meaning we are between ice ages. Those animals were adapted to living
in a cold period (as evidenced by their incredibly furry coats). They were
giants because there was an abundance of food available.
Today’s descendents are adapted to warmer environments. They would have
major difficulties in attempting to survive the freezing winters of the plains.
While some theorize elephants can eat the current trees that are overtaking
the plains, what will lions eat? Predators require huge amounts of prey and
large areas to live in.
The lions will need their natural prey or something similar to it. Introducing
so many animals will change the ecosystems of the plains, not recreate a past
that has been lost.
With the introductions of foreign species there are unknown consequences. Think
back to the episode of the Simpsons when Bart smuggles a toad into Australia.
The little boogers overran the continent, causing a plague of problems. Each
ecosystem has adapted to working a specific way. Add or take away key parts
and you’re left with something completely different that will likely
lead to chaos.
For instance, in his book “The Song of the Dodo,” David Quammen
gives the example of an imaginary island where mosquitoes, frogs, birds and
a certain ground-rutting mammal live.
The ground-rutting mammal creates pools of collected water in which the frogs
and mosquitoes lay their eggs. The tadpoles eat some of the mosquito larvae,
keeping their population in check. The tadpoles eventually grow up to be frogs
and are eaten by the birds.
If we remove the ground-rutting mammal, the frogs lose their habitat and can
no longer lay their eggs. Because mosquitoes need very little standing water
to reproduce, their population skyrockets and with it comes disease, which
is passed from bird to bird, eventually killing them off. Now only the mosquito
is left on the imaginary island, doomed to extinction because it no longer
has a source of blood to incubate its young.
The AP article even talks about the disasters the Australian ecosystem faced
when rabbits were introduced. Australia is the biggest example of humans introducing
foreign species and changing entire ecosystems. The native marsupials couldn’t
compete with the alien placental mammals colonists brought over.
Sure,
some of them still exist today, but in
smaller numbers than when the western world
first discovered the continent. Entire
species disappeared from Tasmania, including
the Thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, a marsupial
that looked like a lanky dog with stripes
going down its sides, and the Tasmanian
aborigines (both were killed off by the
invasion of colonists).
Looking at Australia and Tasmania’s histories, we can see the introduction
of big game will change the ecosystems of the plains. While elephants will
remove the trees taking over the plains, what will they destroy in the meantime?
Will they decide they prefer some other vegetation and eat all of that, causing
that particular plant to become extinct? Will lions eat whatever free roaming
bison are left? What effect will these holes left by newly extinct species
have upon the Great Plains?
Let’s face facts: ecologists are already having troubles reintroducing
gray wolves to areas like Montana because ranchers fear the predators will
decimate their livestock. What kind of havoc will lions and other big cats
wreak upon the ranches?
How
many calves does a cheetah need to survive?
But better yet, how will we protect ourselves
from these animals? We already fear mountain
lions, what will we do about the African
variety?
If these ecologists go ahead and create special reserves for these animals,
how big will they be? Again, predators need a lot of area to survive. How will
they get the land for this project? With property rates going through the roof,
they will be hard pressed to fulfill the needs of their charges.
The Midwest, is not ready for lions, elephants, gazelles, or hippopotami, let
alone “Little House on the Serengeti.”
Jamie Rowe is a senior journalism major and editor in chief of the
Daily Forty-Niner. |
