A Work of Hope - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 140

an adaptation to the presence of the American cheetah, now inhabit
an ecological vacuum, in which they are constrained by neither preda-
tion nor competition. These rewilders call for the introduction of
proxy species to the Americas: exotic members of the groups that
became extinct, or animals which fulfil a similar ecological role.
They talk of introducing Bactrian camels, which live in central Asia, to
replace a similar animal, Camelops , which lived in large numbers in
North America until humans arrived. They suggest importing the African
cheetah to hunt pronghorns, the African lion to pursue feral horses
(which, now widespread, are good proxies for the wild horses which
once roamed the continent), African and Asian elephants to replace the
mammoths, mastodons and other such monsters. (Perhaps Americans
should be grateful that there is no living substitute for the giant sabre-
tooth or the short-faced bear.) Not only, they argue, would these beasts
help to revive American ecosystems and heighten people's interest in con-
servation and rewilding, but they would also be better protected from
extinction if they were living in the wild on more than one continent.
It would not be correct to report that these proposals have been
greeted with universal enthusiasm in North America. Aside from obvi-
ous concerns about the release of lions and elephants, some ecologists
have objected that superficial similarities can mask major genetic dif-
ferences: the American cheetah (a larger animal than the African
species) was more closely related to the puma, for example. 55 The
proxy species evolved in some cases in response to ecosystems and cli-
matic conditions different from those that prevailed in America before
humans arrived. It would be surprising if the way in which they
engaged with the remnant American ecosystem closely mimicked the
ecological relationships of the species they are supposed to replace. But
the idea is worthy of investigation, and perhaps a few experiments.
There are fewer biological obstacles to the reintroduction of a missing
megafauna to Europe. Unlike the extinct American beasts, the monsters
which once ranged across this continent have close relatives in Africa or
Asia. The hippos submerged in Trafalgar Square were of the same spe-
cies, Hippopotamus amphibius , that lives in Africa today. It survived in
parts of Europe until around 30,000 years ago, when it appears to have
been hunted to extinction. 56 The last temperate rhinoceros species to
disappear from the continent bear some resemblance to the black rhi-