Ideas in Progress

Nature has gotten some press attention recently for a proposal to introduce large foreign animals like lions, elephants, and camels to the United States. I don’t see any problem with this concept… as long as it is done on enclosed private land. I’m sure that a business offering either real or photo safari experiences could profitably maintain a large amount of land in an Africanized condition. Perhaps some environmental conservation groups could raise enough money to run a “super zoo” somewhere in North America. There might even be multiple private Africanized areas. Some could be financed by hunters and outdoorsmen who want the animals to interact with, and others financed by environmentalists who want to care for the wild animals but otherwise shield them from human contact. Either group would have their own good reasons for keeping these African species from becoming extinct.

I would NOT want the animals to be simply set loose in an unenclosed area to roam free around the continent endangering people and disrupting our current indigenous ecosystem. I would also NOT want African animals to be imported as part of a government program. I fear that a gov’t agency would be susceptible to bureaucratic growth that would cause it to mismanage the program, cover up mistakes, ignore complaints from individuals (who would be unable to sue for damages the gov’t owned animals caused), and generally have the “big gov’t program” immunity to changes or closing if the program didn’t work properly. Imagine a combination of the Dept. of the Interior's urbanite fantasy based fire control policies combined with the Civil Conservation Corp.’s planting of Kudzu for erosion control. Would this gov’t program to introduce cheetahs and lions to the United States also allow national parkgoers to carry large bore rifles and pistols for self-defense? Or would it just give feel-good advice to tourists about trying to not look tasty? Perhaps it would just ban humans from non-urban areas so that the bulk of the continent could be returned to ‘mother gaia’.

I fear that a gov’t run Africanization program to introduce foreign species, especially if they are uncontained, would be a tragedy waiting to be whitewashed. I think large privately operated and contained areas of large African animals in America could be successful and beneficial, and they would have both the gov’t and other private organizations keeping an eye on them for problems. For it to happen, however, would require a private group to own a large area of wilderness. Unfortunately, most politicians seem to be addicted to the delusion that wilderness should belong to the government, and that the more of the land they control the better.

Update: It looks like private parks have already started. Liberty Matters has a post on the background of this idea (hattip: Blogonomicon). Judging from that it looks like the plan is just an excuse to give even more wild land and power to the government who is then supposed to oversee it's return to their "earth mother", uncontaminated by us humans. I guess the watermelons expect that they will be the ones running the gov't that gets control of the land. I wonder if they think everyone will vote for the privilege of having their land collectivized and sacrificed to these urban delusions of Mother Nature, of if they just plan on doing away with democracy and individual rights so that they can force their utopian fantasy on us unenlightened hoi polloi. It sounds to me like the press releases and media push about the aforementioned Nature article is an attempt by the watermelon extremists to get exposure for their rewilding ideas in hopes that it will "gain traction" and get them more support for their bizzare schemes. I'm confident most Americans would see the uncontained release of large African animals as the crazy fantasy it is. Still, look for the idea to turn up in grade school children's periodicals soon; I doubt the watermelons have finished with their marketing campaign.