Terence Blacker: Give me a home where the cheetahs roam

Apart from being shot at by sexual inadequates, African big game thrives perfectly well in America

According to a professional big game hunter of my acquaintance, a particular type of sportsman is likely to travel to Africa with killing on his mind. He tends to be wealthy, middle-aged and American. Obsessed with the idea of trophies, he likes the idea of being able to tell tales back home of how he bagged what is known as "the Big Five" - elephant, rhino, lion, leopard and buffalo.

More often than not, the brave hunter brings with him a woman who is considerably younger than he. My contact was too polite to make a connection between intimate male insecurity and the desire to kill large animals, but the implication was there.

A more surprising insight into the game-hunting business was that many of the tourists who did it were unusually jumpy and afraid of their prey. The biggest danger for their professional guides is not an enraged buffalo but a panicking, trigger-happy American. Becoming a casualty of friendly fire is something of an occupational hazard.

The imbalance between the dwindling supply of large African animals and the growing demand of those who want to shoot them has led to a booming business of game ranches in America. Here the visitor is not obliged to take malaria pills or fly to another continent. African animals roam over several hundred acres of American ranchland. Apart from being tranquillised and shot at by sexual inadequates, they thrive perfectly well in what should be an alien environment.

There is a reason for this, we are now told. Towards the end of the Pleistocene period, between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, 97 out of the world's 150 large mammal species became extinct, mostly as a result of over-hunting by man. In North America, the casualty list included the mammoth, lions, cheetah, varieties of horse and ass, and camelops, an ancestor of the camel.

A paper published in the latest issue of Nature and co-authored by 13 ecologists and conservation biologists argues that various modern species of megafauna, clinging on to survival in Africa, could act as proxies for their extinct cousins and be released where they used to roam. On the Great Plains of the American Midwest where the American cheetah, Acinonyx trumani, once hunted, the African cheetah, Acinonyx jubatus, might be introduced. Panthera leo, the lion we know today, could take the place of the extinct American Panthera leo atrox.

Before America's vast hunting community get too excited, it should be pointed out that the scheme, if it were to be adopted, would be long-term. Rare species of horse and ass would be introduced first, followed eventually by elephants. Last to arrive, possibly in about 50 years' time, would be the big cats.

"Our vision begins immediately, spans the coming century, and is justified on ecological, evolutionary, economic, aesthetic and ethical grounds," claim the authors of the Nature article. Elsewhere, "Pleistocene rewilding", as it is known, has been proposed as a way of reversing the trend of landscapes towards becoming a scrubby, weedy home for rats but not much else. Cheetah would control deer numbers; the grazing of elephants would enrich grassland and control woody vegetation.

On the face of it, the scheme would seem to have possibilities but, even if one accepts the wisdom of siting large trophy animals in the land of the world's most trigger-happy nation, it has two significant flaws.

While most people are happy to watch the wildness of nature on their TV screens or through the telescopic sight of a rifle, they are less happy when that savagery is closer to home. The grey wolf's reintroduction into parts of America caused outrage, and there are those who still would like to eliminate it altogether.

In this country, misguided gamekeepers in the north of England responded to the reintroduction of the red kite by laying down poison under the mistaken impression that it posed a threat to game birds.

Nature is unpredictable, too. The supporters of re-wilding may have convinced themselves that one kind of camel, horse, lion or elephant will act as proxy for another, but the history of human meddling in species location does not make encouraging reading. Australia's importing of rabbits, for sport, and of the cane toad to counter the predations of greyback cane beetles, are the more spectacular of many examples of environmental meddling backfiring on man.

Nor is the idea that animals belonging to the same species will have the same general effect on the landscape particularly convincing, as a glance outside many windows in the United Kingdom will confirm. In the week of the Government's great grey squirrel initiative - exclusion zones are to be introduced to protect our native red squirrel (shy, sweet, harmless, pretty) from the competition of its imported cousin (aggressive, rude, ugly, ruinous to plants, birds and mammals) - it is worth remembering that, in nature as in life, family connections are not always positive.

Tragically, the campaign to save the red squirrel seems unlikely to succeed. If there is one rule of animal life in Britain, it is that grey squirrels always have the last laugh. Perhaps the experts writing in Nature might consider a time in the future when, instead of little rat-like creatures annoying people by raiding bird-tables, it will Panthera leo and Acinonyx jubatus that are roaming free and out of control.

Terblacker@aol.com