Group wants to transplant elephants and lions to North American Great Plains:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050817/ap_on_sc/wild_america
My favorite line:
“Too bad about that troop of scouts that got eaten.”
“Yeah, but the lions are doing well.”
Well, CalMeacham, I grew up in Oklahoma and I find this completely unbelievable.
Corn? In Oklahoma? Puh-leeeeeease.
Hogwash. I’m sure the oliphaunts, lionses and camels would do just peachy on the American plains. Right up to the point where they get buried under 3 feet of snow for the winter.
I pass by a few corn fields in my various travels across this state, but it ain’t a lot. Oklahoma’s main crops appear to be football, wind, and red dirt.
This site says we’re fairly well rounded in the various crops and food animals, which I found surprising. Seems like everywhere I go it’s either cows or wheat. The corn and pigs must be off the main roads.
I liked this quote from the OP cited article:
Don’t we already have mountain lions in the US?
Yeah, but they tend to shy away from the great wide open. And they’re about 1/4 to 1/2 the size of an African lion. And they don’t hang around in large groups. And they don’t hunt humans.
Corn is very popular in Oklahoma.
I LIVED in Oklahoma for 20+ years. Snow? Pleezzeee, they don’t get snow per se. They get rain, which quickly turns into ice pellets as the temperature drops 30 degrees in two hours, which coats everything solid, then snow kicks in for a few minutes, until the temperature begins to rise again to coat the dusting of snow with ice. In the afternoon, it all melts a bit, then freezes over again after the sun drops.
I find it difficult to imagine elephants roaming Oklahoma lands.
Heh, the farmers think the deer are bad when they eat their crops?
… There aren’t enough headsmacky faces in the world.
What I don’t understand is why this is seen as a problem. Ecological change is Mother Nature’s modus operandi. As George Carlin once pointed out to me (him and I go way back) way over 90% of all species that ever existed, ever, are GONE. We didn’t kill them all. Making half-assed, half-baked, ill-founded (let’s face it, we don’t know nearly enough about the Earth’s ecology to pull off something like this) attempts to save species only makes a mess. If a species is going to die out, let them die out. Some new species will arrive soon enough to take its place. That’s how it works.
heh…I didn’t know Oklahoma was whine country!
You’ve all missed the fact this attempt is being paid for by the NRA.
The Lions eat a few cub scouts and hunters get public support to hunt big game.
No better big game than Lions & Elephants. 
I will now put my tinfoil hat back on. 
Do these ecologist have any clue or is the article purposely making them look as bad as possible?
Re: Mountain lions
Errr…
ok, ok…as a rule they don’t hunt adult humans. Much.
No snow in Oklahoma??? What’s this stuff on my car?
There is plenty of snow in Oklahoma, at least in the Panhandle and NW corners of the state.
In OKC we can count on snow every Winter. Sometimes a lot, sometimes very little, but we always get some. And we get big ass ice storms too, just like Atlanta.
Granted, one year we got only 3 very light dustings of snow all Winter long, but the year I moved here, '89 or so, was snowier than what I would’ve got had I stayed in Denver that year. So, it truly does depend, but we DO get snow in Oklahoma, even in the Oh Kay Cee.
Hell, even Dallas gets snow and ice from time to time…
Well, I guess we don’t get any lions or elephants, then. sniffle 
Can’t we have just one giraffe? I’ll even settle for a zebra!
Screw the lions then. Let’s import snow leopards.
May have to…if they eat up all the sheeps in Montana! That’ll seperate the men from the boys!
Yes but you live in Tulsa, which is practically back east.