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“Pleistocene rewilding offers an experimental framework to
better understand the biology of a continent that vanished
13,000 yrs ago, while simulktaneously providing
evolutionary, conservation, economic, and cultural
incentives and benefits” (664)
Pleistocene Re-Wilding
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“Pleistocene Epoch
1.8 million-10,000 years ago
This epoch is best known as the "Great Ice Age." Ice sheets and other
glaciers encroach and retreat during four or five primary glacial periods.
At its peak, as much as 30% of the Earth's surface is covered by
glaciers, and parts of the northern oceans are frozen. The movement of
the glaciers alters the landscape. Lakes, such as the Great Lakes in
North America, are formed as ice sheets melt, and retreat. Global
warming begins after the last glacial maximum, 18,000 years ago.
The oldest species of Homo—Homo habilis—evolves. The flora
and fauna in the regions not covered by ice are essentially the same as
those of the earlier Pliocene Epoch. Mammalian evolution includes the
development of large forms: woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, musk
ox, moose, reindeer, elephant, mastodon, bison, and ground sloth.
In the Americas, large mammals, such as horses, camels, mammoths,
mastodons, saber-toothed cats, and ground sloths, are entirely extinct
by the end of this epoch.”
• http://msnbc.com/news/wld/graphics/Ea
rths_timeline_dw.swf
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Glyplodont
Mammoths, mastodons, etc
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Ground Sloth
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Camelops
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Woolly Rhino
Teratornis incredibilis 16 ft wingspan
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Giant Beaver
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Rewilding!? Why?
– Functional roles of megafauna is significant
– Loss of megafauna may be both cause and
result of degraded systems
– Loss can lead to ecological chain reactions
that lead to further extinctions
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• Species interactions are hard to
understand even among extant
species, never mind extinct ones.
– But evidence of strong
interactors left evidence of their
influence through various
evolutionary effects
– E.g. “overbuilt” speed in North
American pronghorn. Why is the
pronghorn so fast? (next slide)
– There are tons of anachronistic
traits and dysfunctional
interactions resulting from the
loss of large vertebrates
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• Ecological benefits
– Better understanding in ecology…natural
laboratory
– Disease reduction, e.g., lyme disease,
other diseases carried by rodents
– Species diversity
– Climate change
Gray Wolves
Loss of wolves resulted in in
population increases of ungulate
prey…
– thereby intensifying herbivory
– reducing distribution and
abundance of various tree
species, especially aspen
– affects distribution of
passerine birds
– flood plain sediment
– nutrient dynamics
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• Reintroduction of wolves to
Yellowstone…
“may even include a buffering of
Yellowstone’s biodiversity to climate
change”
Is it Possible?
Przewalski Horses
• Extinct in wild
• Breeding
program built
new pop.
• Two generations
hardened in
semi-reserves in
Europe
• Released back
into NP in
Mongolia
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“Pleistocene rewilding could be part of a
movement to transform conservation biology,
which is currently too easily characterized as
a “doom and gloom” discipline…because we
have acquiesced to a default goal of exposing
and merely slowing the rate of biodiversity
loss. Together these attributes minimize
excitement for conservation and even actively
discourage it…Moving away from managing
extinction and toward actively restoring
ecological and evolutionary processes using
Pleistocene history as a guide provides an
exciting new platform for conservation
biology.” (665)
Cultural and Economic
Benefits
• Humans have strong emotional and cultural
relationships with megafauna
• Between 1999-2004, more than 1.5 million
people visited SD’s Wild Animal Park; by
contrast, only 12 NPs received more than 1.5
million visitors in 2000.
• The reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone
has resulted in an estimated $6-9 million
extra per yr (versus an est. cost of $0.5-0.9
million per yr)
• North American Peregrine Falcon
– Falcons from 4 continents serve as proxy
• California condor
• Bolston tortoise
• Camelids
– US Camel Corps
– Red Ghost
• Cheetahs
• Proboscideans
• Holartic lions
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• Conservation benefits
• “The late Pleistocene arrival of the very first
Americans…and the cotemporaneous
extinctions constitute a less arbitrary
benchmark that is justifiable from multiple
perspectives. Even more evidence points to
early humans having precipitated the late
Pleistocene extinction events…Such
attestation also raises important ethical
questions regarding our conservation
benchmarks and strategies” (664)
Jurassic Park?
“The scientists with the Mammoth
Creation Project are hoping to find a
mammoth that is sufficiently well
preserved in the ice to enable them
to extract sperm DNA from the frozen
remains.They will then inject the
sperm DNA into a female elephant,
the mammoth's modern-day
counterpart. By repeating the
procedure with offspring, scientists
say, they could produce a creature
that is 88 percent mammoth within 50
years.”
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Quagga
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The last quagga, died in August 1883, in a
zoo in Amsterdam.
Henry, born 2005
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Challenges
•
•
•
•
Why Pleistocene as benchmark?
Habitats have not remained static
Invasive species?
Megafauna different than Pleistocene
megafauna (e.g., 162 kg lion v 400 kg
lion)
• Economic/social disruption
Kruger National Park
• 1903
–
–
–
–
0 elephants
9 lions
8 buffalo
a few cheetah
• 2003
–
–
–
–
–
7300 elephants
2300 lions
28,000 buffalo
250 cheetahs
700,000 tourists
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Still…?