Will Reanimation of Extinct Large Carnivores Drive Humans From Western USA?

Rewilding Network—Saving Globe Through Big Wilderness: Another UN Agenda 21 Hoax

Attempts to fathom the United Nation’s “Sustainable Development” program Agenda 21 mean continually peering behind the facade of a thousand “harmless” organizations and programs. This because Agenda 21 is ostensibly socialist dogma seeking creation of world collectivist hegemony on land use, human population size, capitalism and consumption of electricity and water. Since transparent socialism was unable to ever attract a majority in America, these programs must always fly below the radar.

Ironically, Agenda 21 is itself transparently directed towards extreme remedies for the “problem” of mankind. Such ideas as reducing human populations and relocating them near industry, while revoking property ownership rights are the remedies proposed for humanity’s errors. In particular “re-wilding”—or returning huge tracts of land to pristine status while restoring all former animal groups—is one of the most dramatically anti-human ideas ever conceived, defined by one author:

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.

I. What is “Rewilding”?

The term “rewilding” was coined by Dave Foreman, founder of Earth First!—one of the most radical and violent environmentalists in history. Foreman’s book, Rewilding North America: A Vision For Conservation In The 21St Century, is a primary codex for those seeking a radical reduction of humanity’s presence on earth. The Rewilding Institute elucidates Dave Foreman’s book:

Three major scientific arguments constitute rewilding, justifying emphasis on large predators.

1. The structure, resilience, and diversity of ecosystems are maintained by “top-down” ecological (trophic) interactions initiated by top predators.
2. Wide-ranging predators usually require large cores of protected landscape for foraging, seasonal movements, and other needs; they justify bigness.
3. 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…

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.

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.”

II. Rewilding Mission: Reintroducing Large Carnivores

It’s no surprise the rewilding plan to reintroduce expurgated classes of large carnivores onto the American continent will drive out humans. Further, this expulsion of humans from vast land tracts ought not be seen as anything but the ultimate intent of the rewilding project, as its planner admit. This large carnivore reintroduction goal is explained here:

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.

III. Reintroducing Extinct Megafauna—Pleistocene Rewilding

Perhaps the most jaw-dropping part of the rewilding plan involves reintroducing long-gone American animal groups back onto the North American continent. This could happen in several ways. The first would be to reintroduce former indigenous species who once roamed our land—such as elephants and the (wooly) rhinoceros. The second, reminiscent of a sci-fi movie, would be to find DNA materials to recreate extinct animal groups. For example, under this plan, well-preserved extinct animals—such as glacier-bound woolly mammoths, recently disappeared passenger pigeons, or the La Brea Tarpits’ saber toothed cats could be raised as fetuses from scratch. On this Science Daily published: A Plan For Reintroducing Megafauna To North America:

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.

IV. Goals of Rewilding

The goals of Rewilding are staggering, summed up at The Wildlands Project:

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.

• The project seeks this by creating “reserve networks” across the continent. Reserves are made up of the following:
1. Cores, created from public lands such as National Forest and Parks
2. Buffers, often created from private land adjoining the cores to provide additional protection
3. Corridors, a mix of public and private lands usually following along rivers and wildlife migration routes
• The primary characteristics of core areas are large size (100,000 to 25 million acres), allowing for little, if any, human use.
• The primary characteristics of buffers are that they allow for limited human use so long as they are “managed with native biodiversity as a preeminent concern.”
• Moral and ethical guidelines for the Wildlands Project are based on the philosophy of Deep Ecology. (Minimization of personal property and possessions)
• The platform of Deep Ecology is summarized as follows:
1. All life (human and non-human) has equal value.
2. Resource consumption above what is needed to supply “vital” human needs is immoral.
3. Human population must be reduced
4. Western civilization must radically change present economic, technological, and ideological structures.
5. Believers have an obligation to try to implement the necessary changes.

V. Anarcho Rewilding: Green Nihilism

Rewilding exposes roots of doctrinaire Marxism. For example, the final stage of Marx’s Dialectic of History is the emergence of a benign anarchy. The Green movement therefore pushes anarcho-rewilding as a way to sow chaos into human history to cause anarchy to result. Says one site:

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…

VI. Criticisms of Rewilding:

A fair analysis of rewilding efforts exposes profound problems in the doctrine and practice. Here are a few obvious issues.

A. Danger

Rewilding would create clear danger for any residents of North America, especially with the reintroduction of large carnivores from Africa or Asia—such as lions and cheetahs. This risk would only increase with reanimation and release of such exotic beasts as extinct saber-toothed tigers.

B. Anachronistic Heresy

It is a specie of the Naturalist Fallacy that North America should be returned to the habitat existing 13,000 years ago before mankind became preeminent. This fallacy claims that everything in its “natural state” is better than any alternative. But if that were the case, creating vaccines against such dangerous menaces like whooping cough and polio would be immoral or stupid. Further, such attempts at re-balancing a long-dead ecosystem could create an environmental disaster of epic proportions, given how little we know of these extinct beasts, their habits and diseases.

C. Agenda 21 & Property Rights

Perhaps the most pernicious aspects of the entire rewilding plan is its ideological origin. For rewilding is simply an application of Agenda 21, the UN’s audacious attempt to turn the globe socialist (see A Brief History & Description of Agenda 21). So no natural logic or necessity supports the plan, just simplistic Marxism. Further, to accept this policy means giving up our constitutional rights to own property and for due process of law. Finally, socialism never works in actual practice so why adopt a failed ideology?

Many progressive groups, such as the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, toil to put vast stretches of American land under the whip-hand of government control (see Shady Details of Marxist “Earth” Organizations: NM Wilderness Alliance). And the Rewilding Institute’s demand for large carnivores naturally needs massive land tracts to hope to succeed—what a coincidence!

D. Anti-biblical

Finally, rewilding is a stunning rebuke to the Genesis account where God gives mankind charge of the earth, aka the Dominion Mandate, found in Genesis 1:26-28:

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.”

Kelly O’Connell hosts American Anthem on CFP Radio Sundays at 4 pm (EST).

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. Kelly is now host of a daily, Monday to Friday talk show at AM KOBE called AM Las Cruces w/Kelly O’Connell

Kelly can be reached at: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)