Home on the Range

Tech Central Station has a great article about the asinine suggestion by a group from Cornell "scientists" that we "reintroduce" species similar to those that once roamed the Americas in an effort to "restore balance" to the ecosystem. You should read the whole article (it's not that long), but I want to quote a couple of things in particular.

Donlan is a strong supporter of eradicating invasive species on islands, though I suspect he's more inclined to kill rats and tree snakes than ponies. Yet his advocacy of introducing some species into an environment while terminating others suggests he is more concerned with preserving an idealized stasis than he is in determining the long-term consequences of such actions.

I think that this paragraph hits the nail on the head. I'm pretty much convinced that a lot of these "scientists" aren't so much interested in restoration, but in engineering their own version of what things are supposed to be. I think it's rather egotistical, and not "science-driven" as the last article I posted on the subject claimed.

The second comes at the very end:

But let's not kid ourselves -- Donlan and company are not reintroducing anything. They would be introducing foreign species into an environment that has proven it can sustain itself just fine without them. Considering the controversy surrounding the reintroduction of gray wolves into Yellowstone, I'd say the authors have their work cut out for them adding lions and cheetahs to the mix.

Why not? What do I care? Just like Donlan, I live in the east.

This is pretty much the same point that I made.

Science-driven, huh? In the same way that the fiasco of grey wolf "reintroduction" in Western states is "science-driven"? Wolves are running unopposed because ranchers and farmers aren't allowed to shoot them except in extreme circumstances. The so-called "reintroduction" of species that have been absent from an ecosystem for decades and centuries simply doesn't work; why should we expect that this asinine "reintroduction" of species that aren't even native to replace species that haven't been around for thousands of years should be any different?

There are a lot of "good ideas" that come from people on in the East who have absolutely no clue how the real world works. This is precisely that, and that's why it's completely doomed to failure.