Pleistocene Conservation Essay

Conservation is the practice of protecting plants or animals, and their habitats. These plants and animals may be very close to extinction. North America experienced a big loss of megafauna at the end of the Pleistocene era (about 13 000 years ago). This started a program known as “Pleistocene re-wilding”. Re-wilding involves the reintroduction of extant species into areas where they became extinct in the past. This program aims to restore the evolutionary and ecological potential that North America lost all those ago, and in the process, prevent the extinction of the megafauna in Africa and Asia. This caused many opinions about North American re-wilding to form. The two main papers that will be discussed are Donlan et al, 2005 and Rubenstein et al, 2006. Both of these papers express different opinions.

Donlan et al, 2005, emphasizes that humans owe an ethical responsibility to redress the loss of megafauna during the Pleistocene era and to prevent further extinctions of extant megafauna. Humans
There are many things to consider if the Pleistocene re-wilding is to take place. The two main goals of Pleistocene re-wilding are to prevent the extinction of the extant megafauna in Africa and Asia and to restore the evolutionary and ecological potential of megafauna in North America. Some problems that hang over the re-wilding process are genetics, land availability, and the negative impacts that the new megafauna could pose on the existing ecosystems. Donlan et al, 2005, justifies “Pleistocene re-wilding” on ethical and aesthetic grounds. They aim to rebuild an entire ecosystem with African and Asian megafauna that range over different tropic levels. Rubenstein et al, 2006 concludes that resources would be better spent on conserving endangered megafauna in their native habitats and reintroducing them into areas where they have only recently been wiped