Plan Would Move African Animals to U.S.

kw: news, ecoidiocy

Plan Would Move African Animals to U.S. at Yahoo! News recounts the latest and most extreme piece of ecological idiocy so far proposed. Here is the basis: At the beginning of the Holocene, the "modern era" of about the last 12,000 years, most species in a diverse population of large mammals became extinct. It is likely that early people had a lot to do with this, though the radical climate change had to play a rôle.

In addition to the several deer species (including moose), bovines (bison), gazelles (pronghorn), bears, pumas, wolves and coyotes, there were cousins of modern camels, rhinos, cheetahs and elephants. However, the 20,000-year-ago cheetah analog that chased pronghorns was actually in a different family of cats, and was not a cheetah, the mammoth and mastadon species were adapted to a cold climate, similar to Baffin Island today, and and the predator-prey mix had a balance similar to that now seen in the Yukon.

An African ecosystem overlaid on today's North American? Dumb.