d years, shouldn't diminish the luster.Whose West wins?On the other hand, all this represents a revision in thinking that we'd best be up front about, because we have to be clear about which West we're trying to replicate. The Pre-Contact West? The Post-Contact West? A pieced-together Pleistocene West? Or the Best West we can imagine? I have a soft spot for a restored West with wild mustangs in it, and that's a very specific snapshot in time even if you argue, taking the long view, that horses are native.And when we do decide what West we ought to restore, we'll likely as not face (in fact we already have) plenty of questions:How can we expect to restore Indian fire ecology to an America speckled with houses and latticed with roads that act as firebreaks? How do we replicate a continent managed for hunting and gathering with a population more than 30 times larger?Then there are nuances: Returning wolves and building in livestock losses is one thing; how accepting are we going to be that lions or grizzlies have returned and are going to munch the odd tourist or jogger on a recurring basis?There are also specific problems. For one, what we've often destroyed is not just species but ecosytems. Think of the prairie dog communities on the Great Plains, which recent research indicates supported more than 70 different species. The prairie dog community may be simple compared to restoring salmon runs on the tributaries of the Columbia. And as those of us who've supported bison restoration found out when Frank and Deborah Popper called for a Buffalo Commons, not everyone's going to be happy with a vision of restoration.Ecologist Reed Noss thinks large ungulates like bison, along with their carnivores, would need an area on the order of 10 million acres to support a population of 100,000 animals. None of the great parks we created during the heyday of the preservation movement is nearly that large. In bison restoration on the Great Plains lies 21...
