I think its one of those things that pretty wildly depends? Like, hell, even on the specific type of a specific animal. I don’t think proper wild horses (the actual wild, small ones) would do too much damage on the continent E. ferus itself evolved on (and was present on till like what, 10k years ago?) but the feral horses present now are just, so much BIGGER and therefore more of a problem than any wild horse ever was yknow
But like the people trying to justify the hypothetical of plopping down random mix and match species anywhere to make an environment superficially resemble the pleistocene? Yeah thats goofy
(That being said? Florida had native Tropidophis until one of the glacial periods knocked em outta there please give me that back I’d do anything to see those snakes in the wild)
Red-necked Wallabies in Ireland. They’re on a private island, so that likely explains the lack of iNaturalist records, although it is possible to arrange visits with a local guide.
The past feels so much wilder and unspoiled than the present, at least in our imagination. Sometimes I wonder what the Dominican Republic would be like if the nearest extant relatives of all the taxa preserved in Dominican amber were reintroduced. Most of them still exist in Central America.
The hippos in Colombia are the now wild animals that excaped from the plantation of the drug baron Pablo Escobar after his death in the 1990s, finding the perfect surrounding to live and mate.
I recently found galls on Russian knapweed (a terrible invasive) in the foothills of North Central Washington and was wondering if they were one of the biocontrols. There is a gall wasp and a gall midge from the native range of Russian knapweed - I think they got the midges from Kazakhstan. After looking into it, it looks they were first released in the US in Wyoming in 2009.
The galls are indeed Jaapiella ivannikovi which wasn’t listed on iNat.
I have now added a bunch of observations of it but am still the only one that has ever observed this species. It’s so weird, there are so many gall people I would think others would have seen this in one of the other western states or anywhere else outside the Wenatchee area.
Manatees (specifically a West Indian/Amazonian hybrid population) is introduced along the Pacific coast in Panama, and has remained unobserved.
a lot of ecosystems have since developed to the point that the reintroduction of Pleistocene species could absolutely knock things out of whack.
Says who? There are a LOT of species that exist today that in the past were dispersed by then-existing megafauna and which survive today only because they got co-opted as food by humans (avocados) or have become restricted to areas where their fruit can get dispersed by other means (Kentucky coffeetree).
Examples abound around the world wherever the main megafauna have gone extinct. If anything, too little time has passed since their extinction for the ecosystem to have “adapted” or “developed” to not need those anymore.
I think there’s absolutely a need for scientific studies to look into this.
Now that you say it, I think I might have seen one of those on Sandy Hook in NJ this year. It was different looking than the cottontails I usually see, and after looking it up it turns out they were introduced to NJ in the past. Of course I could be wrong but who knows, it was too fast for me to get a picture.
I have a few other examples:
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Italian wall lizards on Orcas Island in Washington, their actual northernmost population (sorry Boston).
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Blotched snakeheads on Hawaii. Introduced to Oahu by Asian immigrants over 100 years ago, but still no iNat records.
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Freshwater needlefish (Xenentodon cancila) on Oahu as well. Hawaii has a bunch of introduced fish that are barely documented.
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Gambian pouched rat on Grassy Key. Supposedly released by a breeder in the early 2000s and has established a population. FWS still cannot seem to eradicate them despite the small size of the island.
I’d heard before that they may also be found in New Jersey but didn’t know much about it.
Brush-tailed Rock Wallaby on Oahu. These animals are descended from escaped zoo animals in the early 1900s. They are undocumented on iNat as they mostly inhabit private land and inaccessible cliffsides.
Do they breed there? All the articles I found just say that they are stowaways from Italy.
I have heard that they do, but don’t know of “official” evidence. Here’s one informal citation:
https://the-british-reptiles-and-amphibians.fandom.com/wiki/Italian_Wall_Lizard
I’ve also heard that some incipient populations have been taken out via targeted responses. So…not 100% sure of status now, but it appears that they can reproduce there?
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