Is rewilding really worth fighting for? I doubt it while reading these two chapters of Morris’ book the Rambunctious Garden. The main concept of rewilding is about reintroducing similar species into the ecosystem where these species once lived before their extinctions. “Top-of-the-food-chain predators” are the main players in rewilding, scientists who support the idea of rewilding believe that the presence of the top predators will help to keep the ecosystem in balance. According to the book, “when predators are not around to kill the various prey species, the reasoning goes, the only check on their population is competition for food. Eventually this uncomplicated competition leads to one prey species squeezing others out until one is left with larger populations of fewer species.” (Marris, 89) When there are no top predators, medium-size predators will start to cause a bigger threat to the smaller species. Therefore, many conservationists who believe in rewilding think that we can rebuild an ecosystem back to the state where there is no human interventions by reintroducing similar species into the ecosystem. This idea sounds very rational, because if there were similar species lived in that area thousands of years ago, maybe by reintroducing them into the environment to replace the extinct species will actually work. These reintroduced species may be able to play the role as top predators and keep the ecosystem in balance. However, as I am reading through these two chapters, I am starting to question myself, is this whole idea really going to work? In order to reintroduce those species into the same area, there must be a lot of researches involved; sometimes scientists have to go across continents to find the species that were similar to the ones that were extinct. It will cost a lot of time and money to transport these animals into America. I agree with Dustin Rubenstein that, “placing proxy animals in a modern landscape could spell trouble. These ecosystems have changed, and existing species have evolved in the thousands of years since megafauna extinctions.” (Marris, 95) Reintroducing these species into the ecosystem may cause some unpredictable consequences because scientists can’t guarantee that these animals are going to behave in the way that they expect them to be; these foreign species may become a potential threat to the existing ecosystem, or they can become one of those invasive species and cause troubles with the local residents.
I don’t think that the concept of rewilding is feasible. Not only that it will take scientists a lot of efforts to be done to reintroduce the species into the ecosystem, there are also a lot of issues regarding ethnics. The book gives an example of how “African communities have to deal with large dangerous carnivores, and the United States doesn’t?” (Marris, 93) I agree that it is unfair for some people to live with their life in danger, just because the world needs lions.
