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Rewilding That Works

By josh donlan on May 25, 2008.

Back in 2005 when my colleagues and I proposed using closely related species to ecological replace extinct large North American animals, there were many who cried foul. Too risky, won't work, impossible to measure - were among the top of the list.

hansen.pngDanish ecologist Dennis Hansen and his colleagues just provided some data to suggest otherwise - at least on islands. Using giant tortoises from a nearby island to replace extinct tortoises on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, Dr. Hansen found that the tortoises increased the survivorship of a critically endangered plant by dispersing its seeds. When seeds of the endangered plant passed through the gut of a tortoises and was ultimately dispersed away from its mother plant, the seeds grew taller, had more leaves, and in general flourished more than seeds not consumed by tortoises.

By using a closely related species as an ecological analog, an important mutualism has been reunited on the Mauritius Islands: giant tortoises and island plants. The harsh critics of ecological analogs and Pleistocene Rewilding now have some solid data to chew on.

See Dr. Hansen's article in the recent issue of the journal PLOS-One.

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By Pete Nelson (not verified) on 27 May 2008 #permalink

I was one of the bazillion journalists who covered your rewilding article in Nature. At the time I was working for a classroom magazine publisher, and we got a mountain of mail from elementary school students who loved the idea.

Now that I'm at the Aquarium, I'm absorbed by oceans. Is there any talk of rewilding oceans? Or are oceans a completely different ballgame. Most of the biologists around here are concerned with getting rid of invasive species rather than introducing new species.