Enter Man: Always Fiddling

So on the island of Santa Cruz, 25 miles off the coast of Santa Barbara, there lives a fox. He’s a native to the island, and has been there long before any man came and ruffled his tail whiskers.

The majestic Island FoxThen along comes man and brings with him pigs for the raising, slaughtering, eating. Eventually the people raising these pigs decided they no longer wanted to live in the area or raise them, so the pigs, being animals, did what they had to do to survive and eventually became these hairy, mean, feral animals that just kept loving it up and multiplying until they’ve over run the place. This attracted these golden eagles—who aren’t native to the island—to come and live there, as they now had this ample supply of pigs to feast on. And when they don’t feel like eating pig, they go for these foxes. They’ve nearly eradicated the foxes, to the point that they’re listed as an endangered species. Also, it should be noted, that the golden eagles wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for all of the original, indiginous bald eagles having been killed off some years ago by humans spreading pesticides.

So now the conservationists trying to save the place are going in and just lock, load and laying into these pigs, trying to kill them all off, in hopes that if the pigs are all gone, the birds will leave and so the foxes will be able to thrive again.

I’m sorry, but WTF?

I mean, okay, humans put the pigs there in the first place and now our solution to a problem we created is to kill off the pigs? And why are the fox more important than the pigs? And why don’t we just kill the eagles, then? They’re the ones killing the foxes, not the pigs.

And while I’m no huge advocate of introducing strange bacteria, wildlife, or plantlife into an ecosystem that isn’t ready to handle it, this has been going on for quite a long time now. Maybe we should just accept this as another part of man’s interference in the natural way and let the pigs have the land. I mean, isn’t that sort of the example we’ve set for the animal kingdom, move in, take it over and claim it as your own.

I’m thinking of a few civilizations based on that theory, particularly Rome, England, the US, and Israel, but I’m certain there are five or six handfuls more.

Here’s a webpage about it, for reading.

And here’s a less biased audio stream, for the listening inclined.

Up Next: M-W's Word of the Day