Thanks to everyone who participated in the short survey - all 286 of you. Below shows the percentage of folks that were in favor of reintroducing our case studies under a scientific framework. Interesting indeed, although one person made the comment that the questions were slightly loaded to encourage positive responses. Perhaps the questions did unintentionally prime the respondents toward a positive response. Nonetheless, I find the results interesting. (See Dan Ariely's great new book Predictably Irrational on some very interesting science on priming and other facets of behavioral economics).
Bolson tortoises have already been reintroduced to New Mexico. A program that is supported by the majority of you who particpated in the survey.
Another person made the comment - What about Europe? There is some great work underway in Europe with taxon substitutions and rewilding. Check out The Large Herbivore Initiative and the Oostvaarderplassen in the Netherlands.
Environment
Life Science
Comments
Remind me why we wouldn't just rewild with all the antelope, elk, bison, wolves, cougars, ferrets, etc that we already have and which we are already aware of how they fit in the North American landscape?
The can of worms factor is a rather large hurdle, to my mind. Not to mention ranchers, enviros who campaign against invasives, and other groups who are working on landscape scale restoration already and are having a tough enough time making headway without the distraction of the lions in North America debate...but I suppose Safari Club International would be a staunch ally.
Erik Orion Grassroots Network
Posted by: Erik | March 26, 2008 7:34 AM
I just voted "yes" but I read a few of the comments and man o' man, science as interpreted on Huffpo is a treacherous landscape to navigate when ideology leads the way. I mean, I don't know everything about vaccines and autism, but I get worried when RFK jr is using his not-insignificant rhetorical skills to persuade nominally intelligent and passionate people that the science is clear when it's not quite so clear to me as all that. I see the use of having a system of alarms in our society and Huffpo does function as something like that, but trying to get across science discussion as a series of short sirens and panicky announcements with tears and screams seems somewhat counterproductive. Excellent endeavor none the less. Thanks again for attempting and let's see what we can do to shed some light into dark corners.
Posted by: doug l | March 26, 2008 12:44 PM
Do you have another set of species we could do this poll with, only with neutral wording and laying out all of the facts? I would be very interested in whether the results differ.
Posted by: jebyrnes | March 26, 2008 2:27 PM