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Re-wilding North America

Nature volume 436, pages 913–914 (2005)Cite this article

A plan to restore animals that disappeared 13,000 years ago from Pleistocene North America offers an alternative conservation strategy for the twenty-first century, argue Josh Donlan and colleagues.

North America lost most of its large vertebrate species — its megafauna — some 13,000 years ago at the end of the Pleistocene. And now Africa's large mammals are dying, stranded on a continent where wars are waging over scarce resources. However much we would wish otherwise, humans will continue to cause extinctions, change ecosystems and alter the course of evolution. Here, we outline a bold plan for preserving some of our global megafaunal heritage — one that aims to restore some of the evolutionary and ecological potential that was lost 13,000 years ago, and which offers an alternative vision for twenty-first century conservation biology.

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Figure 1: Pleistocene re-wilding in North America.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Environmental Leadership Program, Lichen Foundation, Turner Endangered Species Fund, New Mexico Agricultural Station, Ladder Ranch, C. Buell., S. Dobrott, T. Gorton, M. K. Phillips and J. C. Truett for support and encouragement.

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Author notes

  1. Josh Donlan: Co-authors are Harry W. Greene of Cornell University; Joel Berger who is at the Teton Field Office, Wildlife Conservation Society; Carl E. Bock and Jane H. Bock of the University of Colorado, Boulder; David A. Burney of Fordham University, New York; James A. Estes of the US Geological Survey, University of California, Santa Cruz; Dave Foreman of the Re-wilding Institute, Albuquerque, New Mexico; Paul S. Martin of the Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson; Gary W. Roemer of the Department of Fishery and Wildlife Sciences, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico; Felisa A. Smith of the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque; and Michael E. Soulé who is based at Hotchkiss, Colorado.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 14853, New York, USA

    Josh Donlan

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  1. Josh Donlan
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Donlan, J. Re-wilding North America. Nature 436, 913–914 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/436913a

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