Don't let cheetahs prosper

Times Colonist
Friday, August 19, 2005

Prairie sheep farmers got some bad news this week. A team of biologists at Cornell University wants to use the Canadian flatlands as a preserve for endangered African animals like cheetahs and lions. Apparently they believe most of Saskatchewan is a wilderness.

Of course it's not like this idea hasn't been tried before. Remember all those rabbits in Australia? However, the team points out that ancestors of the African cats once roamed the North American plains a million years ago, during the Pleistocene era. They believe today's pronghorn antelope developed its blistering speed -- up to 100 kilometres an hour -- precisely to keep one step ahead of prehistoric cheetahs.

So bringing big cats back to the prairies would reunite them with their traditional prey. Or sheep. Or even sheep farmers. In Tanzania, which is about the same size as Saskatchewan, lions ate 500 farm workers in the last decade.

In fact the idea of game ranches isn't new to the prairies. Bison, elk and some exotic species like llamas have been farmed, with very mixed results. Some believe mad cow disease, which has gained a foothold in prairie deer populations, is linked to this practice.

Nor are our prairies the empty wasteland this scheme implies. They're already a sanctuary for the last major populations of whitetail deer, waterfowl, antelope and upland birds in North America.

Converting those species into meals for hungry, displaced predators is a thoroughly bad idea.