The Politics of Fowl

The New York Time has a conversation up on their website that starts with a few comments about non-native species and goes wildly off course.

Gail Collins: David, here in New York we’ve been having a crisis over swans. Can we talk about that today? I don’t think we’ve ever discussed large fowl before.

David Brooks: I’d be really happy to talk about them, but when I was growing up we called them pigeons. The only birds I remember in New York were pigeons — and maybe sparrows, but sparrows manage to live without actually entering the consciousness of the creatures around them. I’m guessing you’re referring to pigeons and that now we’re calling them swans in the hopes that it will boost their self-esteem.

Gail: Wow, I’m getting a vision of pigeons tattooing each other and shooting up steroids. I think we have another movie script idea. But no, this involves real swans – mute swans, to be precise.

Check out the rest of the discussion here.

They even bring up these guys.

The Rewilding Debate: Debating the Extinct to Death

Image created by Sergiodlarosa

Since 2005, due in no small part to a commentary article published in Nature, Pleistocene rewilding has been a source of friction in conservation biology. Pleistocene rewilding generally differs from traditional conservation biology in its support for introducing extinct megafauna or a proxy species to positively impact ecosystems at the landscape scale.

In an edge.org discussion, Ryan Phelan attempts to justify rewilding because extinction primarily is caused by man.  She frames the issue as such:

"One of the fundamental questions here is, is extinction a good thing? Is it "nature's way"? And if it's nature's way, who in the world says anyone should go about changing nature's way? If something was meant to go extinct, then who are we to screw around with it and bring it back? I don't think it's really nature's way. I think that the extinction that we've seen since man is 99.9 percent caused by man."

Phelan’s questions seem to accuse Pleistocene rewilding opponents as being not only the cause of anthropogenic eradication of species but also apathetic to the possibility of reversing that same eradication. There are several underlying assumptions in her questions worth questioning.

1. When does one start the clock on which extinctions should be considered “caused by man”?
2. Does the fact that man caused an extinction necessitate the reintroduction of the extinct species? 
3. Even if we conclude that man has a duty to reintroduce all animals since the Pleistocene, how would one go about it?