Why Can't We Recover America's Buffalo?

Why? Firstly removing horses and donkeys will also take a lot of resources. Secondly what is the impact of horses and donkeys on bison and caribou? In the areas where I have seen horses and bison present they seem to pick different habitat and mostly co-exist quite well both having their own unique impact on the ecosystem.

Finally there is more and more evidence that horses (Equus sps) existed in the Americas until quite recently.
 
DDcorvus said:
Why? Firstly removing horses and donkeys will also take a lot of resources. Secondly what is the impact of horses and donkeys on bison and caribou? In the areas where I have seen horses and bison present they seem to pick different habitat and mostly co-exist quite well both having their own unique impact on the ecosystem.

Finally there is more and more evidence that horses (Equus sps) existed in the Americas until quite recently.
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Horses did exist in North America during the Pleistocene, but remember that North America's ecosystems have changed quite profoundly since then, even before the Columbian Exchange. These days horses are known to have many negative effect on ecosystems and are definitely best classified as an invasive species.
 
Fair enough and that is a different situation than in Eurasia and Africa where Equids always remained in the ecosystem in some form. But I was also referring to some studies that found that horses might have survived in the Americas much longer than was considered before (and yes I do realise that the ranges and population size might have been a lot smaller so for most of the Americas horses are gone for 10.000 years).

And are horses the problem or are horses at a certain population density a problem?
 
DDcorvus said:
And are horses the problem or are horses at a certain population density a problem?
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Given that horses have few to no natural predators in North America I think these are the same problem. Horses almost certainly wouldn't be a problem at low densities, but I don't think they would ever occur that way. Wolves and Cougars tend to go for much easier prey.
 
DDcorvus said:
Secondly what is the impact of horses and donkeys on bison and caribou? In the areas where I have seen horses and bison present they seem to pick different habitat and mostly co-exist quite well both having their own unique impact on the ecosystem.
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There are more efforts being made to protect feral horses and donkeys, despite the fact that they are invasive species, than there are endangered native ungulates such as bison and caribou.
 
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