What do you think about the plan to re-introduce cheetahs and lions to the American West?

Question

Cheetahs and lions once roamed the American West, but they went extinct at the end of the last Ice Age.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8983461/

http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfront...

What do you think about plans to re-introduce them?

A third-generation freethinker

Answer 1

well ,it will not work ..... the main reason ,is people don't want wild life , roaming around any more...  as we have demosted

   we kill wolfs, bears  mountain lions  daily , even the bush gov. said it was a good idea to kill them off....

  say we . did it ,  how long would it be before , we were killing lions, cause we thought   they we harming our sheep ... cattle  even chickens ....  i give it a week...

  i think we should  open more opened spaced wild life parks  to house , these lions  you talking of , or they will die  out  altogether ......     and as long as the canned food hunts go on ,  whats the point ?

Answer 2

Absolutely stupid.  Cant be any decent biologist involved.

Answer 3

The mountain lion is already there...

Answer 4

As I said when you asked under "Environment", these are not re-introductions; they are introductions of animals that are only similar to the ones that once lived in North America. They would have to be confined in a zoo-like preserve with no chance of escaping (fat chance). It's a stupid idea, as expressed.

Answer 5

Oh dear

Answer 6

... They went extinct over ten thousand years ago.

Besides, the Mountain lion is not doing well there, why would cheetahs and lions do any better?  They would either quickly die or kill off the mountain lions.

The lions and elephants and cheetahs that lived in North America were very different from the ones that live today in Africa.

Answer 7

I think that instead of spending thousands of dollars on trapping and killing mountain lions and the southern united states spending thousands of dollars in protecting their mountain lions they should reintroduce them to the southern united states. (for some reason the whole southern united states think that black panthers live here. crazy people, its the exact same species)

and placing lions and cheetahs here would be bad, there would be huge misunderstandings in the public and if the lions and cheetahs didn't die on their own, the general public would kill them thinking it is an animal escaped from the zoo.

Answer 8

I have a feeling that even if it is successful in "rewilding" these megafauna, the ultimate result will be the eventual displacement of species currently native to the U.S., like the wolf, the coyote, and the bison, and then we'll have to have another "plan" to reintroduce those animals.

You can't make additions to the ecological composition of an area without some species being pushed out.