Re-wilding: don't overlook humans living on the plains

The Pleistocene re-wilding gambit.

Re-wilding parts of North America with exotic Old-World species is an exciting but controversial conservation proposal hijacked by opinions over appropriate conservation baselines and details of implementation. Debate over its worth has become partisan. Here, I summarize the multifaceted issues surrounding Pleistocene re-wilding and edge debate from hazy conceptual arguments to empirical questi...

Re-wilding the conservation agenda in the UK

The creation of wildland, through the process of re-wilding, has great potential to address (at least) two key challenges for conservation in the UK: (1) ongoing biodiversity loss; (2) facilitating climate change adaptation. Consequently, there is a strong argument for re-wilding and wildland to become mainstream in conservation research, policy and action in the UK. In this perspective piece, ...

Pleistocene Park: Does re-wilding North America represent sound conservation for the 21st century?

A group of conservation biologists recently proposed to populate western North America with African and Asian megafauna, including lions, elephants, cheetahs, and camels, to create a facsimile of a species assemblage that disappeared from the continent some 13,000 years ago. The goals of this program, known as ‘‘Pleistocene re-wilding’’, are to restore some of the evolutionary and ecological po...

Women's Responses to the Challenges of Plains Living

Don't overlook the complications of tonsillectomy.

A lthough the number of patients undergoing tonsillectomy has gradually declined since the 1970s, it remains one of the most common surgical procedures performed worldwide. The procedure, of course, is fairly routine—but not without risk. Mortality rates for the operation range from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 35,000, with morbidity rates ranging from 1.5% to 14%; mortality and morbidity after tonsille...