6 Comments

  • Bob Berghaier

    Hello Jon,

    I read this last week. I am most likely be in the minority but I am all for replacing the moose with woodland caribou (an endangered species in the lower 48) if the Isla Royale wolves disappear. Releasing lynx as well works for me. With 7 billion plus on the planet we are going to need to make decisions like this to keep large mammal diversity.

    • Jon Hall

      Hi Bob, this was actually Matt Miller’s post (I wish WordPress made it more obvious who is writing). But I enjoyed the piece and see that the article has generated quite a lot of comment on TNC’s blog. I don’t see there can be any hard and fast rules for this sort of stuff. Ideas on what is “natural” are inevitably subjective as Matt says and I think each case should be approached pragmatically (on its merits and contribution to the bigger picture, and what is likely to work) rather than dogmatically. Plus I’ve never seen a Lynx so I am all for more of them 🙂
      Jon

  • mattinidaho

    Thanks for the comments. I am all for reintroduction and rewilding programs and think they have a lot of promise for conservation. I think the issue here is that the wolves only arrived in 1948. I think restoring lynx and caribou makes more sense, although I think a lot of habitat restoration would need to happen first–the island has been altered quite a bit by humans.

    • Vladimir Dinets

      I agree. Of course, the place might be too warm for caribou by now, but at least it’s worth a try. As for the lynx, the island has a huge snowshoe hare population: you run into them all the time.

  • peojpeoj

    I am not sure. Ik think we have to replace what we have destroyed in the past as much as possible indeed. But with islands I think it is always a bit different. The wolves came and now they may be leaving again, leaving this island to probably turn into another kind of habitat, again. Could this not be a natural occuring thing? That an island one day becomes barren due to overgrazing because of lack of predators, providing other types of habitat, and in a next fase becomes densely forested, providing yet other types of habitat, all because off some species that might arrive due to ice bridges etc. I do not think we can simply compare this to the mainland. Would it no be an idea to just wait and see what happens?

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