Wildlife Park in Midwest for Endangered Species

PARIS (AFP) - The best way to save the planet's large wild mammals facing extinction this century, including lions, cheetahs, elephants and camels, is the creation of a huge nature preserve in the US midwest, a group of leading biologists reportedly argue.

Using the end of the Pleistocene period some 13,000 years ago -- when the prehistoric cousins of these and other "megafauna" roamed North America by the millions -- as a benchmark, the scientists call for the "re-wilding" of great swathes of sparsely populated land, Nature magazine reported.

"It would take many, many hundreds of square miles (kilometers)," said Harry Greene, one of the authors and a professor at Cornell University in New York. "We are talking about an American Serengeti," he added, referring to the 15,000 square kilometer (5,800 square mile) wildlife preserve in northern Tanzania.

Read the rest in AFP