By Kelly O'Connell ——Bio and Archives--August 7, 2012
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Rewilding is "the scientific argument for restoring big wilderness based on the regulatory roles of large predators," according to Soul and Reed Noss in their landmark 1998 Wild Earth article "Rewilding and Biodiversity."Rewilding is ultimately about property rights. In transferring large tracts of land (aka Big Wilderness) into government hands it thereby cancels any rights of the original owners. This is, in fact, the entire goal of rewilding large, dangerous carnivores--to take away mankind's property rights to big parcels of land so the elite caste might macro-manage earth according to their dictates. In this way, progressives like eco-terrorist godfather Dave Foreman hope to embargo all constitutional rights and drive mankind into the cold, hopeless servility of the state.
Three major scientific arguments constitute rewilding, justifying emphasis on large predators.A congressional example is found in U.S. Congress - H.R. 5101 Wildlife Corridors Conservation Act of 2010, calling for "wild animal bridges and tunnels, and increasing roadless areas."In short, the rewilding argument posits that large predators are often instrumental in maintaining the integrity of ecosystems. Overall, large predators require big space and connectivity.
- The structure, resilience, and diversity of ecosystems are maintained by "top-down" ecological (trophic) interactions initiated by top predators.
- Wide-ranging predators usually require large cores of protected landscape for foraging, seasonal movements, and other needs; they justify bigness.
- Connectivity is also required because core reserves are typically not large enough in most regions; they must be linked to insure long-term viability of wide-ranging species...
If native large carnivores have been killed out of a region, their reintroduction and recovery is the heart of a conservation strategy. Wolves, cougars, lynx, wolverines, grizzly and black bears, jaguars, sea otters, and other top carnivores need restoration throughout North America in ecologically effective densities in their natural ranges where suitable habitat remains or can be restored. Without the goal of rewilding for large areas with large carnivores, we are closing our eyes to what conservation really means--and demands.
Dozens of megafauna (large animals over 100 pounds) -- such as giant tortoises, horses, elephants, and cheetah--went extinct in North America13,000 years ago during the end of the Pleistocene. As is the case today in Africa and Asia, these megafauna likely played keystone ecological roles via predation, herbivory, and other processes. What are the consequences of losing such important components of America's natural heritage? In The American Naturalist, 12 scientists provide a detailed proposal for the restoration of North America's lost megafauna. Using the same species from different locales or closely related species as analogs, their project "Pleistocene Rewilding" is conceived as carefully managed experiments in an attempt to learn about and partially restore important natural processes to North American ecosystems present for millennia until humans played a significant role in their demise 13,000 years ago.As to the cloning of extinct magafauna, one writer says this--The Mammoth in Glen Canyon:
French explorer Bernard Buigues and Larry Agenbroad, Northern Arizona University hope that Jarkov Wooly Mammoth sitting inside a 23-ton block of ice will contain flesh sample with some perfectly preserved DNA. That and some proven cloning technology could resurrect a long-gone species. What Buigues and his team would do is something similar to the process that created the famous sheep Dolly: extracting the nucleus of one adult mammoth cell and inserting it into an empty egg cell. The embryo would then be implanted in the uterus of an Asian elephant, the mammoth's closest living relative, a surrogate mother that would gestate it as its own but without transferring to the baby any of the elephant's genes.
The Wildlands Project goal is to set aside approximately 50% of the North American continent (Turtle Island) as "wild land" for the preservation of biological diversity.
Rewilding is the process of undoing domestication. In green anarchism and anarcho-primitivism, humans are said to be "domesticated" by civilization. Supporters of such human rewilding argue that through the process of domestication, our wildness has been tamed and taken from us. Rewilding, then, is about overcoming our domestication and returning to our innate wildness. Though often associated with primitive skills and relearning knowledge of wild plants and animals, it emphasizes primal living as a holistic reality rather than just a number of skills or specific type of knowledge. Rewilding is most associated with green anarchy and anarcho-primitivism or anti-civilization anarchy in general...
Then God said, "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
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Kelly O’Connell is an author and attorney. He was born on the West Coast, raised in Las Vegas, and matriculated from the University of Oregon. After laboring for the Reformed Church in Galway, Ireland, he returned to America and attended law school in Virginia, where he earned a JD and a Master’s degree in Government. He spent a stint working as a researcher and writer of academic articles at a Miami law school, focusing on ancient law and society. He has also been employed as a university Speech & Debate professor. He then returned West and worked as an assistant district attorney. Kelly is now is a private practitioner with a small law practice in New Mexico.