Soapbox Warning! Raving Editorial Warning! Stay Clear!
Have you heard the latest? African elephants are being culled in Zimbabwe Nature Reserves by Park Wardens because of their population increases. Elephants are just too numerous for their own good. Or so we, the self-appointed keepers, think. We must decide whether we are farming these rare, beautiful creatures for our own outdoor zoos or whether we shall allow them their own space on this crowded world. Can we be the only species with property rights?
But let’s get back to reality for a moment. Let’s think… if there are too many elephants maybe there is something missing in the environmental equation. A handful of elephants a functioning community does not make. A community encompasses a multiplicity of competitors and predators among other elements. Perhaps with some predators and competitors as well as less protection from the “vagaries of nature” the elephant situation would balance itself. But that would be inhumane and messy; it is far better to shoot them and sell off their body parts at a profit. Would we ever be willing to run the risk and let natural communities stand without our hand in everything? I doubt it.
This is not an issue for us Canadians to become too complacent about either. We need look only to the vanishing wilderness of Canada. If a large and identifiable animal population is needed then the woodland caribou herds of Labrador and Quebec will do. They are being decimated by environmental degradation and destruction caused by NATO low-level flights, damming of huge tracts of land and mining. The coyote of Nova Scotia is an even closer example. We decimate their numbers, encourage their prey for our sport and then talk of stamping them out when they do not behave.
This is not about elephants or caribou or coyotes, however, this is about all life. I know that these problems are far more complicated than I make them out to be. It can be scary to be so responsible as a species, especially when we really do not know what we are doing. We shall survive, have no fear, we can survive anything with our technology. Well… perhaps not everything, perhaps not the loneliness and loss of wonder that is increasingly assured each time a species is destroyed.
I was the Editor of my Biology Department Newsletter called Biotype in the early 90’s at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and this is an example of one of my Editorials.
