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Home , Pleistocene megafauna, Pleistocene Park, Pleistocene rewilding, Sergey Zimov

FEATURE WHERE THEWILD

The recent NatureTH paper INGS proposing to bring , , and elephants to raised a wild rumpus. But are the critics missing the point? WERE by William Stolzenburg

28 Conservation In Practice • Vol. 7 No. 1 | January-March 2006 Illustration by Carl Buell

Vol. 7 No. 1 | January-March 2006 • Conservation In Practice 29 HE CONJURED IMAGES were sur- nent already plundered of its greatest beasts. real, lions prowling Nebraska Why not raise the standard, to that more glori- corn fields, elephants stomping ous and decisive moment some 13,000 years across North Dakota. From ago, when people first set foot in North there the visions grew frightful, America? It was a profoundly optimistic invita- Texotic and dangerous beasts swarming the Great tion—to elevate the very goal of conservation— Plains, slaughtering livestock, spreading disease, that somehow got muffled amid a chorus of ruining rural livelihoods as far abroad as Africa. scorn. Maybe it was all just a misunderstand- When, last August, a group of 12 conservation- ing arising from the little paper’s herculean task minded scientists and scholars aired a provoca- of explaining such a giant vision in so few words. tive proposal in the prestigious journal Maybe the authors—who do indeed see a (1), the journalists who reported it and the col- need for elephants and lions one day to wander leagues who publicly pummeled it couldn’t help the plains of North America—had simply lost letting their imaginations run wild. Which was their marbles. Or could it be that the would-be at least part of the idea. rewilders—in so nakedly challenging the status Under the audacious heading “Re-wilding quo of conservation—had unveiled a flaw too North America,” the paper’s authors—among fearsome to face? them some heavyweights in the field of conser- vation biology—called for restoring “large wild HATEVER THE REASON, no one could vertebrates into North America,” meaning those say the rewilders hadn’t offered fair that disappeared at the end of the last ice age. Wwarning. The idea of restoring In the two pithy pages that followed, those large America’s fauna to something more closely re- wild vertebrates were spelled out in the more- sembling prehuman times—when sabertooths familiar terms of , , tortoises, and— prowled and thundered through as if to make sure no one was nodding off in an places that would later be called Los Angeles armchair—cheetahs, lions, and elephants. Yes, and Newark—has a far deeper history than its in the . For real. latest splash in Nature. Paul S. Martin, a coau- The paper was partly meant to jostle a con- thor of the rewilding paper and an outspoken servation community suspected of falling asleep paleoecologist from the University of , at the wheel. At that it succeeded. In the first has been unabashedly promoting such Pleis- week following publication, the two lead au- tocene visions in print and in public lectures thors received more than 1,000 letters and for 40 years. Even as the Nature bombshell was phone calls from three continents. They saw hitting the streets, a book-length version of their proposal aired on network TV and dis- the rewilding proposal was quietly headed to cussed in national newspapers and magazines. press in Martin’s magnum opus, Twilight of the Some of the comments were congratulatory, a Mammoths (2). good many of them were disparaging, a hand- Twilight is the autobiographical odyssey of ful of them were downright hateful. Martin’s renowned “overkill” hypothesis, which But too few of the naysayers, to the authors’ lays the brunt of the blame for the late Pleis- disappointment, offered much beyond wet- tocene extinction—the abrupt disappearance of blanket dismissals. None seemed willing to ven- some 40 of horses and camels, ture near the soul of their proposal. In their and ground , lions and , paper they had politely pointed out that the mammoths and —in the spear- 1492 arrival of Columbus—long considered wielding hands of North America’s first big- North America’s standard of ecological excel- game hunters, the . Infused lence—was in fact the “discovery” of a conti- throughout with Martin’s admiration for

30 Conservation In Practice • Vol. 7 No. 1 | January-March 2006 The journalists who reported on the paper and the colleagues who pummeled it couldn’t help letting their imaginations run wild. Which was at least part of the idea.

America’s missing , Twilight’s con- namics, invasive species, , the cluding chapters are dedicated to their return. politics of conservation. Among them, of course, “I believe it is time to take an approach that was the chief messenger of overkill, Paul Mar- includes not only creatures traditionally con- tin. There, too, was Michael Soulé, one of the sidered ‘at home on the range’ but also some of spearheads of the modern discipline of conser- those not seen roaming the by any vation biology; marine ecologist James Estes, since the Clovis people,” writes Mar- whose unveiling of the sea otter as a key archi- tin. “The Bering Land Bridge should not be tect of Pacific kelp had become one of shut down forever in the interest of imagined the classic studies in ecology; and Dave Fore- faunal purity.” man, former congressional lobbyist and founder of the Rewilding Institute, a think tank for re- OT EVERYONE HEARD heresy in Martin’s storing large carnivores to vacant niches of preachings. In a 2004 is- North America. Nsue of Conservation Biology, Martin In September 2004, they gathered for a and Cornell doctoral candidate Josh Donlan long weekend at Ted Turner’s Ladder Ranch in published a paper called “Role of ecological his- the Chihuahuan Desert of New . Over tory in invasive species management and con- easels and PowerPoint and after-hours beers, servation” (3). In it they prodded their col- they dissected the rewilding idea and broke it leagues to rethink more seriously the pristine down to its factual nuts and bolts, its practical myth of 1492. Their paper was peppered with challenges and criticisms, its societal costs and Pleistocene ambitions: “In the process of return- benefits. ing the California condor . . . to the Grand Can- The Ladder group agreed on several sober- yon, should we also return the kinds of animals ing premises: That influence had utterly the bird once fed on: equids, camelids, moun- pervaded the planet. That what qualifies for tain , and proboscideans?” wildness today is a paltry façade of the awesome Donlan’s advisor at Cornell was the evolu- Pleistocene bestiary we stumbled upon only tionary biologist Harry Greene, by coincidence 13,000 years ago. That the difference between a friend and kindred spirit of Martin. Greene then and now is at least partly, if not princi- and Donlan often found themselves wonder- pally, our own doing and therefore our duty to ing about rewilding and how such a seemingly repair. legitimate goal for conservation had apparently gone nowhere. “Most people dismissed it as sil- EGARDLESS OF WHO or what was to liness,” says Greene. “The more we talked about blame, they concluded that the large it, Josh and I decided it’s not silly. Let’s put to- R animals’ absence was to be ignored at gether a working group. Let’s thrash it out.” great peril. Forests, , and savannas had The two assembled an eclectic team of evolved in step with the . twelve—experts in paleoecology, large mam- Their soils had been turned by trampling mals, community ecology, predator-prey dy- hooves, their seeds widely ferried and judiciously

Vol. 7 No. 1 | January-March 2006 • Conservation In Practice 31 fertilized in dung. All but the very meted in stepwise fashion. From there, the eco- biggest of those had in turn been logical cascade rumbled all the way to the bot- shaped in body and habit by their large preda- tom of the sea. As sea otters disappeared, their tors. Were there no repercussions for such whole- prey proliferated. Sea urchins marched en masse, sale megafaunal erasure? Reports from the field mowing down coastal kelp forests across the were already suggesting the feared answer. Aleutians and reducing one of the Bering Sea’s There was northern , where about most productive to barrens. 10,000 years ago 1 million km2 of vibrant grass- The megafauna’s most shining endorse- lands had suddenly vanished. They had been ment is now on public display in the dramatic replaced by infertile mossy —a transfor- greening of Yellowstone National Park under

Are there no repercussions for wholesale megafaunal erasure?

mation that ecologist attributes the reinstated reign of the gray . For 70 to the disappearance of a great menagerie of years following the wolf’s extermination from Pleistocene grazers. Zimov and colleagues argue the park, Yellowstone’s oases of aspens, cotton- that the grassy Siberian that once fed woods, and willows had been browsed to stubs musk oxen, mammoths, and wild horses was by the world’s largest herd of . Within five fed in return by the megafauna. (4) Their ma- years of the ’ return in 1995, the elk were nure fertilized the grasses, and their hooves running scared and willows were sprouting three trampled the competing mosses. meters high. With the willows’ return, the bea- The legacy of the missing mammoths may ver followed—from one colony before wolf re- run deeper still, to the frozen ground. There, introduction to ten colonies at last count. With some 500 gigatons of —more than twice the new beaver ponds have come more fish and the tonnage stored in tropical forests—lies tenu- with the streamside groves more songbirds. The ously locked in ice. As the climate now warms list of beneficiaries goes on, from ravens and at breathtaking rates, Zimov foresees the per- grizzlies fattening on wolf leftovers to the en- mafrost melting and those gigatons of carbon couraging number of surviving being released skyward, feeding runaway green- fawns now that the lurking have been house heating. It helps explain the urgency with scattered by territorial wolves. (6) which Zimov has been leading a government- These are part of a growing body of por- backed rewilding experiment in Siberia. Grass- tents to the ecological costs of doing nothing, Above: The "African" lands maintain colder soils than moss-bound not to mention the esthetic bankruptcy fore- in the foreground is tundra. By restocking the tundra with horses, seen in a world overrun with weeds. In short, an example of the modern sub-Saharan musk oxen and , he is hoping to win back the megafauna matters. Which brought the animal. The larger beast the grasslands, to buy time against Siberia’s 500- Ladder 12 to a rather imposing quandary, that behind, gigaton time bomb of carbon. of resuscitating a graveyard of deceased species. (Panthera leo atrox), was Signs of megafauna importance have also Their answer was, in a word, proxies—close the most widespread been coming from the sea. Most notoriously, relatives and ecological equivalents that would mammal in the late there is an ongoing collapse of marine mam- Pleistocene except for serve as megafaunal stand-ins, that might re- man. Its remains have mal populations in the North Pacific, quite pos- kindle what the mass extinction had extin- been found in over 40 sibly stemming from the decimation of great guished. The country was already well stocked localities from Alaska and whales (the ultimate megafauna) by industrial with potential candidates. Not too far from the Yukon to California as whalers. This hypothesis, championed by Alan where the Ladder 12 were sitting, some 77,000 well as east to Florida and Springer and Jim Estes, followed from corrobo- large mammals were roaming the hill south to Peru. The most recent radiocarbon-dated rating lines of evidence. (5) The great whale’s country within the expansive confines of game is just over 10,000 disappearance forced its chief predator, the killer ranches. Among them were camels, cheetahs, years old. (Illustration by whale, to seek smaller game in the form of sea and myriad species of African . Sur- Carl Buell) lions, seals, and sea otters, whose numbers plum- viving cousins of mammoths and mastodons

32 Conservation In Practice • Vol. 7 No. 1 | January-March 2006 were living in zoos across the U.S., and there It was as though the rewilders had floated were some 16,000 working elephants in Asia. a handful of trial balloons and nobody had Here was a means of not only restoring noted the blimp among them. There was no North America’s megafauna but also providing serious scientific challenge to the rewilders’ new a fail-safe for endangered megafauna of the Pleistocene restoration benchmark. world. Wild Bactrian camels, on the verge of extinction in their last holdout in the Gobi 12-MINUTE TALK gains us no converts, desert, might find new refuge in the prickly says Greene. “Sometimes people’s first scrublands of the Southwestern U.S. A reaction is we must be stupid. But it Here, also, was a way to essentially resume turns out when we give the 50-minute talk, evolutionary roles, wherein cage-bound chee- people realize they haven’t thought about this tahs and lions might once again hone their speed as much as we have. They say ‘Huh? I didn’t and wits in open pursuit of North America’s know there was a holarctic lion or that chee- repatriated herbivores. tahs lived here 11,000 years ago. I didn’t know If all went well with the trial runs, perhaps there were five species of horses.’” one day the fences could be moved back to ac- Five weeks after the 12-minute version of commodate grander arenas—Pleistocene “Re-wilding” appeared in Nature, Greene was parks—in the widest unpeopled spaces of the invited to give the full 50 minutes to a roomful Great Plains. Such was the essence of the of curious biologists and conservationists in the rewilders’ ultimate vision. vertebrate zoology wing of the National Mu- Word went out in the Nature paper, and seum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. word quickly came back, setting Greene and Greene began by passing around a fibrous Donlan’s phones ringing and email boxes ping- sphere of dried plant bits the size of a softball. ing. News bureaus on both sides of the Atlantic “It is what it looks like,” said Greene. Its origi- swooped in, smelling blood. Amid the few tepid nal owner was a creature with the bulk of a griz- nods of approval from the professional ranks, zly , ambling about the inner gorge of the the jeers resounded. “Pure fantasy.” “A terrible Grand Canyon 11,000 years ago. “It’s a Shasta and absurd idea.” “Impossible.” ground turd and it’s not a fossil.” African critics savaged the American This, explained Greene, was his favorite rewilders for threatening to take away not only response to those suggesting the Pleistocene was their animals but also their ecotourism dollars. such an irrelevantly long time ago. “Ten thou- One even suggested they were fronting for big- sand years ago is only a hundred centuries. It’s money sport gunners who shoot fenced animals. twice the lifespan of the longest-living plant on “It’s not a stretch to say that they mostly thought Earth today. Yes, 10,000 years ago is a lot longer we were going to come dump a bunch of ele- than I’ll live, but it may not be so long in some phants on the suburbs of Topeka,” says Greene. other contexts.”

Vol. 7 No. 1 | January-March 2006 • Conservation In Practice 33 For the next 50 minutes, Greene serves up about organisms whose very close relatives or more metaphorical handfuls of sloth dung, conspecifics were in this country 100 centuries irreverently bursting conservation’s most pre- ago.” cious myths, chiding the media’s worst-in- Throughout his presentation, Greene con- formed critics, and repeating his blasphemy: veys a bittersweet mix of vindication and dis- Why not ? appointment with regard to the lameness of his To the notion that wild horses are pests of colleagues’ objections, their blindness to the North American range, Greene offers this rewilding’s inherent optimism. But even as he answer. “When I moved to Berkeley in 1978, I struggles to explain how the scientific discus- bought into the prevailing wisdom there, which sion has so uncannily skirted the science, it soon is that [wild horses] are the scum of the earth, becomes clear that science was never really the that they tear up , and we should all issue. be given old-Model 94s and go out and shoot Greene flashes another familiar doubt on burros,” says Green. “It never occurred to me the screen: “People won’t tolerate wolves and to wonder why, if they’re so bad now, they grizzlies; they surely won’t tolerate elephants and weren’t bad 100 centuries ago?” It turns out the lions.” Here Greene has finally run out of hope- animal the Spaniards brought to North America ful retorts. “It might be this is an insurmount- in the 1500s is very closely related to the ani- able problem.” mal that once played a key role in dispersing It turns out rewilding has laid far more than seeds of Pleistocene savannas, says Greene, science on the table. It has challenged the top- which makes today’s wild literally the most survivor among the megafauna to con- native returned. sider lightening up its 13,000-year death grip To one of the more resounding objections, on dominance. It has opened new and fright- that the African lion doesn’t belong here, Greene ening territory. suggests that the African lion is a myth. DNA When all is done, Greene asks for ques- tests show that the king of beasts that so fa- tions. Nothing but softballs are returned. The mously presides over African savannas is likely conversation is courteous, playful, apparently a subspecies of a more cosmopolitan cat—let’s supportive of bringing home the Pleistocene call it the holarctic lion—that once ranged megafauna. But then again, this is the National across the northern hemisphere. If conservation- Museum of Natural History, where all the ele- ists can restock the U.S. with seven subspecies phants and lions down the hall are stuffed. ❧ of peregrine falcon from around the world, why can’t they reinstate the holarctic lion? “Here are some other common criticisms,” Literature Cited Greene says, flashing a quote on the screen. 1. Donlan, J. et al. 2005. Re-wilding North America. “Haven’t you people heard of rabbits and Nature 436(7053):913-914. 2. Martin, P.S. 2005. Twilight of the mammoths: Ice cane toads?” (Referring to the textbook catas- age extinctions and the rewilding of America. trophes that followed introduction of South University of California Press. American cane toads and European rabbits to 3. C. J. Donlan and P.S. Martin. 2004. Role of eco- , both of which ended up sweeping the logical history in invasive species management and conservation. Conservation Biology 18(1): continent like plagues.) 267-269. Greene adopts a comically incredulous 4. Zimov, S.A. 2005. : Return of the tone: “I’m astonished to hear biologists say this ’s . Science 308:796-798. 5. Springer, A.M. et al. 2003. Sequential megafaunal to me. I know that there were no placental mam- collapse in the North Pacific Ocean: An ongoing mals in Australia, let alone rabbits, until very legacy of industrial whaling? Proceedings of the William Stolzenburg recently. And not only were there no cane toads National Academy of Sciences 100:12223-12228. is a freelance journalist 6. Smith, D.W., R.O. Peterson, and D.B. Houston. researching the ecological in Australia, there were no bufonids ! We’re not 2003. Yellowstone after wolves. BioScience impacts of top predators. talking about something like that, we’re talking 53(4):330-340.

34 Conservation In Practice • Vol. 7 No. 1 | January-March 2006