Reintroducing the Atlantic Gray Whale

One of the disadvantages of the Internet is it destroys any pretensions I have to originality. I've thought for a while that it would be an amazing feat to reintroduce the Atlantic gray whale to the wild. Of course, one complication arises from the Atlantic whale's extinction. The easy solution is to take some of the closely related and now-abundant Pacific gray whales and bring them over.

Turns out that my original idea has been developed much more extensively by other people. Still it would be interesting. I've followed the reintroductions of condors and wolves closely here in the US, and beavers were just reintroduced to Scotland after a longer absence than gray whales from the Atlantic. Sometimes reintroductions don't work well (Mexican wolf, lynx in Colorado), but if you don't try....

There's also the issue that these would still be Pacific grays, and so not exactly the natural species for the habitat. On the other hand, that niche in the Atlantic Ocean isn't being occupied right now, which also isn't natural. Bringing in the Pacific grays seems closer to natural than the present situation. And it would be cool.

Bonus unrelated blogging: Obama reiterates his promise to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell. My prediction from months ago that I thought I blogged about but can't find anywhere, is that he'd put off the repeal until 2010 and then use it to run against Congressional Republicans as bigoted and soft on defense. I'll bet he'll put off repealing the more popular Defense of Marriage Act until 2011.