> From: "M. Smith" <whimbrel at u.washington.edu>
>
> Brian is absolutely right. In eastern Washington, for example, many
> people think "Well the cows just replace the native grazing animals",
> assuming buffalo were there. That of course is *totally wrong*. The
> Columbia Basin had been ungrazed by *any* ungulates for milennia until the
> arrival of horses in 1730 (Daubenmire 1970 - Steppe vegetation of
> Washington). Prior to that, the last ungulates were probably early forms
> of bison, antelope, and perhaps some mastodons prior to the last
> glaciation, about 12,000 years ago. Warming events caused the local
> extinction of these critters (I suppose if that hadn't done it, the sudden
> inundation of water probably would've!). The point is, from approximately
> 12,000 years ago to 1730, there were no grazing ungulates in the Columbia
> Basin. Cows got here in 1834, sheep in 1860, and by 1900 severe
> overgrazing had denuded most of the shrub-steppe vegetation in the state.
> In fact, that period (around 1900) was probably the lowest point for range
> condition, having improved since then (see Daubenmire, or Franklin and
> Dyerness 1988 - Natural vegetation of Oregon and Washington).
>
> The obvious question then is this:
>
> How could any ecosystem which evolved for 12 milennia without grazing
> ungulates possibly benefit by introducing them?

Isn't 12 millenia awfully short for the evolution of an entire
ecosystem? My understanding is that North American grasslands and their
associated fauna evolved together over the past 2 *million* years, and
that the ungulate extinctions that happened 12,000 years ago were,
evolutionarily speaking, a very recent aberration.

I know there can be noticeable evolutionary change over 12,000 years, both
in species (land-locked seal species come to mind) and of "ecosystems" as
a whole (most of the low Arctic is very recent), but on the whole, 12,000
years is very short, and the basically North American grasslands are still
recovering (or would have been, if we hadn't started altering everything
with the cows, etc.) from the sudden, relatively recent loss of all their
major grazing ungulates.

Note: THIS IS NOT AN ARGUMENT IN FAVOR OF CATTLE GRAZING. I am just
pointing out that saying that North American grasslands evolved without
heavy grazing pressure is a flawed argument to use against cattle grazing,
because you could make a very good case that our grasslands actually
evolved (earlier than 12,000 years ago) under spectacular grazing pressure
from the then-abundant North American horses, hipparions, antelopes, and
bison. There are other arguments against cattle grazing, IMHO, that are
stronger.

And now back to birds: Found a freshly road-killed merlin Saturday
morning in Wallingford (after a lovely morning's birding at the Fill,
BTW). Poor fella's head was completely smushed. The rest of the body was
in beautiful shape, very fresh, and I have saved it to make an educational
mount of the wings, tail, & skeleton for the U.W. natural history classes.
But it made me think -- how many small falcons are there in Seattle,
anyway? Could this have been Wallingford's only merlin? Well, at least
it picked a beautiful day to die...

Kathleen Hunt