Lions, elephants and cheetahs - Oh my!

How high can the ivory tower be?

The latest from on high in American academia is a proposal to transplant elephants, big cats and other wildlife from Africa to the Great Plains (including Montana) as a means to conserve the species and "restore" the western landscape to a condition that existed thousands of years ago.

No kidding.

The plan from "prominent ecologists" aims to make up for the "rapid extinction" of large mammal species such as mastodon, saber-toothed tigers and other extinct Pleistocene species that have modern counterparts in Africa or elsewhere in the world.

The proposal by itself is hardly of concern because it is so absurd. What is disturbing is the minds that came up with it and how this thinking has somehow gained traction on the wilder shores of American academia.

There's something disturbing about the arrogant detachment, the implied sense of deep-thinking superiority that comes with the proposal: It is so high-minded that no one is expected to understand it, at least not initially.

So they plow forward, getting national media coverage. News articles explain their thoughts, reporting that animals relocated from Africa would "restore the biodiversity in North America to a condition closer to what it was before humans overran the landscape more than 10,000 years ago."

Since when did scattered clans of nomadic hunters, with stunningly short life spans, amount to humans "overrunning" the landscape? The problem here is the mind-set that humans are not part of natural processes but instead are supposedly alien invaders that have spread like a cancer.

The eco-intelligentsia simply can't have it both ways. On the one hand, there is a relentless push for restoration of natural processes in many environmental debates, usually to a "pre-settlement" condition. But on the other hand, backers of the Pleistocene restoration plan are seeking to reinvent natural processes that have occurred over thousands of years.

It's not surprising that the idea is drawing criticism from many corners of the academic world.

"It is not restoration to introduce animals that were never here," a University of Washington anthropologist observed.

But the Pleistocene restoration backers seem to be unshaken by the obvious. The Associated Press article continues, "Others wonder whether people would support African lions making a home on the range, given the opposition to the reintroduction of native wolves in the rural West."

Obviously there's not enough of this wondering going on in the loftiest of ivory towers, far above the crude and meaningless concerns on planet Earth below.

It doesn't take a scientific analysis to predict that free-ranging African lions or cheetahs or elephants will never be well-received by neighboring landowners, recreationists, county commissioners, lawmakers, governors, lawyers or even environmentalists who are interested in protected species such as grizzly bears and wolves.

Steve Pilcher, executive vice president of the Montana Stockgrowers Association, had the perfect response: "Just when you thought the world has gotten as weird as it can get, something like this comes along."

Backers of the plan are not discouraged by such common skeptical thinking.

"We are not saying this is going to be easy," confessed Cornell University ecologist Josh Donlan, the lead author of the proposal. "There are huge and substantial risks and obstacles."

You are correct, Professor Donlan. It will not be easy, because it will never happen.