Pleistocene Re-Wilding Rests on False Idea of Equilibrium

Nature magazine reports that some scientists are interested in returning megafauna to North America, a plan called Pleistocene re-wilding. What this means is that feral horses (Equus caballus), wild asses (E. asinus), Bactrian camels (Camelus bactrianus), Asian (Elephas maximus) and African (Loxodonta Africana) elephants and lions (Panthera leo) will wander the great open spaces of North America to enhance the biodiversity that was lost 13,000 with the arrival of homo sapiens. While appealing in a romantic way, this ill-conceived notion rests on a false belief in static equilibrium. In short, don’t do it.

Megafauna is the ten-dollar word for big animals. Back in the Pleistocene era, North America had huge animals that are now gone. The only place on earth with megafauna left is Africa, with a few in Asia, and biodiversity fans worry that all the eggs in that basket means the loss of more of the big animals any day now.

Moreover, the loss of the big creatures left gaps in the ecosystem of North America. So now, the pronghorn sheep has no real predators and can run 60 miles per hour for no reason. Introducing cheetahs to America’s southwest would create a new habitat for the cheetahs and place a check on the pronghorn population, “provide strong interaction” as one analyst bloodlessly put it.

It sounds all well and good, but there is an unfortunate truth here. Human beings came to North America and have been part of the environment for 13,000 years. The species doesn’t stand above or outside nature but is an integral part of it. The balance wasn’t upset with the arrival of mankind, because there was never a balance in the sense of perfect harmony, scales balancing equally. The ecosystem is more like a surfer shifting weight here and there, in a dynamic equilibrium, one that needs to adjust constantly to remain balanced. The arrival of humans shifted the weight one way, and the extinction of the megafauna counterbalanced it.

Cheetahs in Arizona would be an even bigger problem to suburban Phoenix than coyotes are. Megafauna died out in North America for a reason; those species failed to adapt to the arrival of a new species that hunted them to extinction. Introducing new species into the North American wilderness to fill in “gaps” in the ecosystem takes the wrong view. Those gaps aren’t there because the entire system has shifted to address the absence of megafauna. By all means, protect the African habitats that exist, but putting resources into an artificial “revival” of Pleistocene animals on other continents is a waste. They were wiped out once, and there’s no reason to believe the benefits merit risking another extinction in North America.



© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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