ORIGINAL: Lanse couche couche
I think that buffalo are part of the natural state of the Midwest too. But a couple thousand of those things running loose would wreak havoc. The reintroduction or spread of particular animals has to be evaulated according to contemporary conditions,including human and livestock ppopulation densities, not what the natural state was 150 years previously.
Who said anything about recreating 150 years ago? We're talking about those who want every predator exterminated because they will eat a few deer and using wildly inflated assessments of the supposed danger they pose as rationale. There's a big difference between having a few in a managed population, and 150 years ago.
While the DNR in MI has refused until recently to admit there are cougars in MI, there are a decent number around confirmed from coast to coast, north to south. Yet all of these terrible things they supposedly do have not happened -- no one's kid has been drug off a school bus stop and eated, deer populations in the south are higher than ever....it's just fear-mongering because some "hunters" only care about themselves and how many deer they can see from their propane-heated stand and not actually have to HUNT a little.
Cougars are pretty reclusive, the areas you hear having problems with them out west are areas where the population has gotten TOO HIGH and the young males can't find territories and are pushed (hungry and tormented) into the suburbs where they really don't want to be in the first place.