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> The ecologist's "museum earth" view, that picks some moment in time and strives to preserve or restore all ecologies as an exact replica of that state (ignori
by ggchappell 12y ago
> The ecologist's "museum earth" view, that picks some moment in time and strives to preserve or restore all ecologies as an exact replica of that state (ignoring the red queen effect that probably makes this focus on "sustainability" itself unsustainable).
It's worse than that. If I read the literature correctly, 15,000 years ago, North America had elephants (mammoths, mastodons), giant sloths, llamas, and horses[1], now all gone. And it had a much greater variety of some categories of animals that are not quite all gone: large cats, pronghorns.
When the first European explorers looked at North America, they thought they were seeing a pristine wilderness, looking more or less as it always had. But they were really seeing wildly out of balance ecologies still reeling from the recent loss of most of their large animals.
Basing wildlife management strategies on the idea that what the early explorers found was a sustainable steady state is a very problematic idea.
Also, I would really like to see a living mammoth. :-)
[1] The wild horses in North America today are an old-world species that was imported by Europeans not too many centuries ago.
- ekianjo 12y ago> [1] The wild horses in North America today are an old-world species that was imported by Europeans not too many centuries ago. The humans in North America today were originally imported from Europe/Africa/Asia not too many centuries ago :)
- timdiggerm 12y agoIt's better than that. By the time Lewis & Clark got to the West, they saw massive herds because of the recent smallpox epidemics wiping out most of the apex predator: man.
- panopticon 12y ago> When the first European explorers looked at North America, they thought they were seeing a pristine wilderness, looking more or less as it always had. But they were really seeing wildly out of balance ecologies still reeling from the recent loss of most of their large animals. Any sources on this? I'd like to read up on this stuff.
- moultano 12y ago1491 is where I learned about it. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39020.1491 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39020.1491 There's also a much shorter version of the book published in the Atlantic. http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/302445/ http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/30244...
- ggchappell 12y agoI thought The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples by Tim Flannery was very good. The book actually covers a long timespan. It begins with the Chicxulub meteor impact 66 million years BP and ends with the present time. Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0802138888/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/0802138888/