Lions, and Cheetahs, and Elephants -- Oh My!

A memory: My college roommate and I were camped high in a quiet corner of the Smokies, enjoying postprandial tobacco and passing a wineskin of Jim Beam between us. As dusk deepened, we looked out over an expanse of Blue Ridge topography that tumbled away into the distance, and talked about the conservation ethic, whether or not it would take sufficient hold among the masses fast enough to keep landscapes like this one intact. "Bet on places that have charismatic megafauna," was Erik's sardonic observation.

All this bubbled up today as I read Josh Donlan's latest entry over at Shifting Baselines. Donlan, a conservation scientist at Cornell, is one of the chief proponents of Pleistocene rewilding -- reintroducing to North America the descendants of large mammals that evolved on the continent but went extinct 13,000 years ago. In this vision, cheetahs would once again stalk  pronghorn antelope in Wyoming; lions and camels and elephants would once more roam American savannas. Sounds off the wall, but serious scientific, economic, and conservation arguments have been marshaled in support of Pleistocene rewilding. (OnEarth articles from Sharman Apt Russell and Sharon Levy shed some more light on these ideas.)

I don't claim any special insight into whether or not it's feasible, or advisable, to give this bold idea a try. But there's a part of me that surely does see the appeal.

Go check out Donlan's blog, and take the survey he's put up -- weigh in on the prospect of loosing more charismatic megafauna in select parts of the United States.

(Lastly, I can't help it -- wouldn't "Charismatic Megafauna" be a killer band name?)