Could bringing back camels ‘rewild’ the American West?

[Techno-Druid]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.df6e25fabeb1

On March 3, 1855, the United States Congress earmarked $30,000 for camels. This was thanks to Jefferson Davis, acting as secretary of war before he would turn against his country in the Civil War. It might sound strange, but commissioning an expedition to round up some camels for the United States wasn’t a bad idea. America’s great southwestern desert beckoned for inclusion into the union, and what better animals for soldiers to ride into the arid frontier than camels? Thus the United States Camel Corps was formed. Unbeknownst to the military men behind the effort, this was actually an early — and totally unintentional — experiment in something called "rewilding.

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Even though camels might bring to mind today's dromedaries of Africa, Bactrians of Asia and guanacos of South America, the fact of the matter is that camels first evolved in North America around 50 million years ago. The first were about the size of a rabbit, but in time they evolved into a variety of sizes — including some that were giraffe-like in stature — as species crossed land bridges to other continents. By about 8,000 years ago, though, the last of North America’s camels had died out.

Unbeknownst to Davis, when the Camel Corps arrived in Indianola, Tex., with 34 camels, they were returning the animals to the soil of their distant ancestors.

Conservationists Meredith Root-Bernstein and Jens-Christian Svenning considered the question in a recent issue of Journal of Arid Environments. While rewilding is often framed in terms of bringing certain species to new habitats to replace their lost relatives, this isn’t actually the end goal. The point, Root-Bernstein and Svenning write, is to use carefully selected species that provide “ecosystem services” that enrich habitats.

Camels, the researchers write, could change their habitats in a variety of ways. Much of that change has to do with what goes into a camel and what comes out the other end. The fact that camels often drink brackish water and eat salty plants, for example, means they can spread salt over the landscape. Some plant seeds might have a better chance at germinating after spending some time traversing a camel’s digestive system. Not to mention the fact that adding another big herbivore to the ecosystem means more food for predators and scavengers.

There might be drawbacks to bringing camels back to North America, though. Camels can take on a wide variety of plants, including those with prickly thorns and other defenses, and this, Root-Bernstein and Svenning write, means that camels “may be prone to destroy plants that are not adapted to intensive grazing or browsing.” And as with wild horses — another unanticipated experiment in rewilding — camels might aid the spread of invasive species, chewing through native plants while leaving dung piles that could help spread the seeds of competing species.

“A stumbling block in the use of camelids for rewilding is the relative lack of research on camelid functions in ecosystems,” Root-Bernstein and Svenning write. Exactly what camels would do requires more careful observation and experimentation. Nevertheless, camels still provide a possibility to enrich ecosystems that have suffered from the wants and needs of our own species. It wouldn’t be a return to the Pleistocene epoch, but perhaps a few camels could help foster a wilder future.

Admittedly being on the more radical spectrum of environmentalism, I would definitely be interested in the concept of reintroducing camels to arid regions of the United States and Mexico. We have a lot of remnant Pleistocene plants that are not digestible by mustangs or bison, plants that camels can digest.

Although I also think that before any species are reintroduced, we should focus on expanding the present ranges of elk, moose, plains/wood bison, pronghorn and their predators.

[Gamdwelf]

Meh, camels are assholes.

[Techno-Druid]

This isn't "rewilding." It's ecological meddling, which we've proven to be especially terrible at due to our inability to predict the for all intents and purposes infinite number of interactions between the introduced species and the target environment.

I would argue that we (as humans) were the ones who wiped out camelids, equines and proboscideas in the Americas. The correlation of the extinction of megafauna in the late Pleistocene epoch heavily correlates with the arrival of humans in the area.

And humans haven't been all that bad in fixing our fuckups (I know, surprising). We did bring wolves back to Yellowstone, which greatly improved the ecology and brought down the number of elk and coyotes (which meant more rodents and smaller ungulates for other predators). The Romans also unintentionally brought fallow deer back to Europe from the Middle East.

[Kronik85]

If the last of the american camels died out 8000 years ago then it's a safe bet that camels have no business being used to "rewild" North America. For all intents and purposes they would essentially be an invasive species with few natural predators that would easily out compete your native fauna and create far more problems than the few (if any) you have now.

The thing I never get with these topics Atethecat is why on earth you want to do this stuff to begin with. I appreciate (to a degree) your curiosity but it seems your the kind of fella who would set the world on fire just to see what it looked like lol.

[Techno-Druid]

If the last of the american camels died out 8000 years ago then it's a safe bet that camels have no business being used to "rewild" North America. For all intents and purposes they would essentially be an invasive species with few natural predators that would easily out compete your native fauna and create far more problems than the few (if any) you have now.

The thing I never get with these topics Atethecat is why on earth you want to do this stuff to begin with. I appreciate (to a degree) your curiosity but it seems your the kind of fella who would set the world on fire just to see what it looked like lol.

Well 8,000 years sounds like a lot from a human perspective, but that's barely the blink of an evolutionary eye. By the time of the last mammoths on Wrangel Island, the Egyptians were already building the pyramid of Giza. Outside of Sub-Saharan Africa, we live in ghost ecosystems with species evolved to deal with threats from species that no longer exist (most likely due to us).

I guess I just see rewilding as a potential attempt to undo the damage and destabilization mankind has brought on the natural world. Sounds very utopian, I know, but I think we have much more to gain from ecological restoration than to lose.

Of course I also try to be realistic, it's very unlikely that a lot of species that could play ecological surrogates to long lost species will be brought to those areas due to the potential danger they could pose to the native population and vice versa.

But a manchild can dream, can't he?

[Independent voter]

Only grizzlies are big enough to eat them so we'll need lots more grizzlies.

[Deleted]

No I am against reintroducing extinct animals into ecosystems that have moved on.

[Deleted]

great, more immigrants from Africa

[Deleted]

We reintroduced an extant species to its recent historical range. That's a far cry from introducing the nearest relative of a species that has been dead for tens of thousands of years.

Exactly. Big difference is the timespan,

[Maletalana]

great, more immigrants from Africa

HA

10chars

[Techno-Druid]

Only grizzlies are big enough to eat them so we'll need lots more grizzlies.

Wolves are the most prolific hunters of camels in their native ranges in Asia.

[Kronik85]

But a manchild can dream, can't he?

You dream as big as you want......just kindly keep them away from me. I don't have your penchant for suicide via an extinct super predator. I'm not being mean spirited here but if I hear that your on the board for some kind of real life Jurassic Park equivalent then you won't catch me being on the same continent as it.

[Deleted]

[url]Admittedly being on the more radical spectrum of environmentalism, I would definitely be interested in the concept of reintroducing camels to arid regions of the United States and Mexico. We have a lot of remnant Pleistocene plants that are not digestible by mustangs or bison, plants that camels can digest.

The EU can supply you with a few million Middle Eastern refs to tend to those camels.

[Yvaelle]

Guys if you are serious about this sort of thing, camels aren't the place to start. Cats are.

The Big Cat Initiative is a really key topic that deserves far more attention, both my mother and sister have personally worked to support them.

Much like reintroducing wolves, big cats are apex predators - which is also why our previous generations worked tirelessly to wipe them out (because they were still potential threats to us).

The downside we have since learned, is that the top of the food chain in any given ecosystems plays an absolutely essential role - and industrialized humans cut the head off virtually every food chain by culling all the big predators (cats, bears, wolves, etc).

As a result, globally we've seen an explosion of herbivores like deer - which has a negative impact on plant life, which actually causes the environments to deteriorate: so that herbivore populations boom, run out of food, prevent the plants from reproducing effectively, which causes permanent damage to the total ecosystem - which causes the herbivore boom/bust cycles to become both more severe/erratic, but also have consistently smaller peaks (weaker ecosystems).

What we need, is apex predators like big cats (and wolves) to regulate herbivores like deer - yet their own populations are regulated by only growing to match the herbivore boom cycles - and decline when herbivores begin to replenish (they don't need a regulator because they are regulated effectively by the deer/herbivores below them).

To fix the wild, we need big cats.

[Celista]

It's like nearly everyone in this thread has no idea how delicate ecological balance is and the dangers in introducing apex predators like big cats into North America...

[jimboa24]

Fuck the haters, let's do it. Bring on the camels!

[draynay]

8000 years is a long time, extant species which are "similar" to extinct ones aren't necessarily going to fill the same niche, assuming other organisms haven't already filled the niche over the course of that long interval. Seems needlessly meddlesome and dangerous to native species to force an interaction with what is essentially an invasive species, regardless of this "rewilding" branding.

[Kalis]

I would argue that we (as humans) were the ones who wiped out camelids, equines and proboscideas in the Americas. The correlation of the extinction of megafauna in the late Pleistocene epoch heavily correlates with the arrival of humans in the area.

Shh...you're spoiling the narrative.

I've watched Dances with Wolves, the native Americans were at one with nature and would never do anything like that.

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I appreciate (to a degree) your curiosity but it seems your the kind of fella who would set the world on fire just to see what it looked like lol.

He wants to teach apes to start the fires.

[Kronik85]

He wants to teach apes to start the fires.

For the love of god man don't give him any ideas! Yes the apes were probably here before us and who knows what wonders they could achieve once they start cooking their own food and farming but I'm quite content with a world which isn't aflame where I don't have to spend my days running away from Direwolves, Phorusrhacids and 2 metre long Centipedes (meant to be herbivores but seriously fuck that shit! EWWWWWWWWWWWWW!).

I'm increasingly old, dangerously out of shape and I like my fauna to be more scared of me than I am of it.

[Kalis]

For the love of god man don't give him any ideas! Yes the apes were probably here before us and who knows what wonders they could achieve once they start cooking their own food and farming but I'm quite content with a world which isn't aflame where I don't have to spend my days running away from Direwolves, Phorusrhacids and 2 metre long Centipedes (meant to be herbivores but seriously fuck that shit! EWWWWWWWWWWWWW!).

I'm increasingly old, dangerously out of shape and I like my fauna to be more scared of me than I am of it.

You've misunderstood. He made a thread about teaching apes to make fire.