Rewilding' Missing Carnivores May Help Restore Some Landscapes

Timothy Cushman

AP Biology

Current Event #19

March 18, 2018

Klein, Joanna. “'Rewilding' Missing Carnivores May Help Restore Some Landscapes.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Mar. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/science/rewilding-carnivores-wolves.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront.

With the increase in the number of endangered and threatened species, researchers are looking into how to successfully rewild large carnivores. Rewilding not only helps animals that are threatened, it helps whole ecosystems. In cases where wolves have been reintroduced, “wolves tidied up explosive deer and elk populations … ate coyotes, freeing up their prey for others.” The reintroduction of animals is seen as beneficial to many species and areas. Dr. William Ripple and Christofer Wolf analyzed hundreds of areas, where large carnivores have disappeared, where rewilding could succeed. When planning to rewild a species, researchers look for areas that have had a small human impact and are large and have available prey. Despite finding over 130 potential spots for rewilding, their paper included only two specific areas where they believe rewilding would work out as planned. Putting grey wolves in Olympic National Park in Washington and red wolves into the Everglades National Park. They felt that these areas had sufficient “space for reproduction and development, prey and humans who may tolerate them.” The problem with the other locations is humans who still hunt for animals or humans who compete for carnivores prey. In their research, they found that their largest problem was finding areas where humans are willing to live with large carnivores nearby and are willing to stop the activities that caused a decline in their population in the first place.

This article is very important to everyone because as humans we need to live alongside other species. The author quotes an anthropologist, Layla AbdelRahim, who stated: “Perhaps the solution is rethinking what it means to be humans in a natural world.” Humans have to realize the damage we have done to certain species and be willing work alongside relief efforts to increase the populations of certain endangered species. This article is an important step in bringing awareness to relief efforts and human impact on the environment.

Overall, I feel that the author, Joanna Klein, wrote a wonderful article. She laid it out in a way that was easy to follow. Klein also included quotes from researchers that added to specific ideas. These quotes also added credibility to her article by proving there was research backing up her claims. Despite being overall wonderful, there were two ideas that could be improved upon. Firstly, she mentions how two specific areas were selected for rewilding, however, she never goes into details on what those areas have that others do not. She mentions how they have ample space and prey, but never specifically says what separates it from many other areas. The inclusion of this information would allow the reader to gain an even better understanding of how hard it is to find a suitable site for rewilding. Another improvement to the article would be to spend more time talking about how rewilding works. It would be interesting and informative if she had included information on where the animals came from and what was done to help their populations grow. The inclusion of these two pieces of information would allow for a better understanding of how rewilding works and why it is so hard to do.