Here's an idea which has my wholehearted support- introducing wild, African animals (cheetah, elephant, etc) into the Great Plains of America.
Lions stalking deer in the stubble of a Nebraska corn field. Elephants trumpeting across Colorado's high plains. Cheetah slouching through the West Texas scrub.
This "rewilding" idea, replacing the megafauna made extinct by man, is to restore biodiversity to the continent by reintorducing species similar to those lost 10 to 50 thousand years ago.
As a commenter on Tim Worstall's site notes- they are also toying with the idea of introducing elephant to Australia.
This looks like a good idea as not only will it give those species most at risk a chance of survival, but in years to come when populations have stabilised somewhat it could give American hunters a chance to tackle the sort of big game that many can only dream about. Even the big game reserves in Africa have to cull species every now and then and what better way to help finance the reserves in the states than to permit very limited hunting?
6 comments:
Jay.Mac,
This is David from OxBlog and Democracy Arsenal. I couldn't find an e-mail address for you, so this will have to do.
All I wanted to say is that I just responded (also in the comments section) to one of your comments on my Luke Stricklin post.
Cheers,
David
There's a wild animal park about a hour's drive SW of Dallas, it's drive through, you can buy little buckets of food for the animals, who will mooch right through your car window ... been there, it's totally cool. For the most part, the animals seem to do pretty well with the climate.
BTW ... I think I'm the only person over 17 that I know who admits to seeing Dog Soldiers. Thought it rocked!
Sorry to post twice ... just re-read the article ... wasn't there a reason why those animal species died out in N.America 10-50,000 years ago ... ?
Dog Soldiers is fabulous- word is a sequel is planned. The only hint of the story was "You'll find out why they're called Dog Soldiers."
Was your question a reference to my hunting idea? If I'm taking you right then I'd have to say that every game reserve has to control animal populations, particularly when (in this suggested case) the animals are on a wild reserve. Hunters will pay BIG bucks to take game like this and, as long as the price is kept lower than paying for a trip to a hunting reserve in Africa, there will be plenty of takers for a chance like this. Thus whoever is running the reserve will have a way of offsetting some of the costs of running it.
The way to run it would be to issue say 10 licences for a particular species and then have a game ranger take the hunter out and show him which members of that species he's permitted to take. Only game marked for the cull would be eligible for the hunter to take.
The reserve keeps the population controlled, the animals continue to thrive, the hunter gets his trophy and the park makes some cash.
What happens if they accidentally step on a butterfly though? Oh, hang on, time travel isn't involved is it?
That reminds me- weren't they making that story into a movie?
Whatever happened to that?
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