As a human attempt this is breathtaking. Bringing back tigers, etc. Phenomenal.<p>Something troubles me - not specifically about this attempt but such attempts in general.<p>I live a few miles away from the "Meadowlands" in New Jersey - a good example of land thought to be useless and in the need of 'improvement' and yet it is rich enough to support wildlife within eyesight of NYC. People have drained it and dumped unmentionable crap in it. Cars and refineries pollute it. And yet it survives and provides much of the areas o2 and has other useful functions like providing a resting place for the dead bodies from the real life 'Sopranos'. I've seen deer and woodchucks by our datacenter and coyotes have been reported poaching dogs in the area.<p>"Unimproved land" I think they call it - marshes, wetlands, swamps and bogs. Sometimes we rush in to improve 'wastelands' that are not wssted land. Wetlands and tidal flats are the basis for life and there are more biomes than the visible 'pretty' ones with lions and tigers and bears...<p>A forest burns down and it remains an ugly, smelly blight - but it becomes a different ecosystem for a geological instant ( a few human generations...) But there is a human impulse to 'fix' it. Like we fixed Australia by introducing rabbits or the US by adding starlings and English sparrows. Our improvements often become problems in their own right.<p>It is hard to argue with building forests, though. There is no place I personally enjoy more. The forsets of the Catskills or the Adirondacks. Or the ones I grew up near in suburban NJ. WHen I lived in Korea - looking out at Buhkansan (largest mountian in the Seoul area) in the winter - I remarked how the mountain looked like a closely cropped head or hair. My friend informed me that was a legacy of the Korean War napalm (or whatever it was called at the time) was used to clear the mountains of hiding places. The trees were so even because they had been planted in the postwar years, so the forests I enjoyed hiking in were the result of a huge communal amount of human activity.<p>Again - mad props to this guy and the community around them. I suspect that he rescued land that was ravaged already by human activity as well as the mentioned flood.
I live a few miles away from the "Meadowlands" in New Jersey - a good example of land thought to be useless and in the need of 'improvement'<p>"Unimproved land" I think they call it - marshes, wetlands, swamps and bogs. Sometimes we rush in to improve 'wastelands' that are not wssted land. Wetlands and tidal flats are the basis for life and there are more biomes than the visible 'pretty' ones with lions and tigers and bears...<p>A forest burns down and it remains an ugly, smelly blight - but it becomes a different ecosystem for a geological instant ( a few human generations...)<p>Again - mad props to this guy and the community around them. I suspect that he rescued land that was ravaged already by human activity as well as the mentioned flood.