It has to be some kind of omen:
at the same time scientists are proposing turning the Great Plains into a wild animal park,a highschool girl in Kansas is killed by a Siberian tiger during a photo shoot. You do the math. It doesn't sound like a good idea to me. My sympathies to the family of 17-year-old Haley Hilderbrand, who died in the attack.
Those guys are giving conservation science a bad name. The "Buffalo Commons" concept should be tried wherever feasible, but not this.
Posted by: Dave | August 19, 2005 at 07:37 PM
Hi, Dave--I agree: You can't "conserve" something that never was. And they're awfully generous with other peoples' land. And if you think getting Israelis out of the Gaza Strip is tough, try moving some of those old farmers and ranchers off their homesteads. It wouldn't be a nonviolent confrontation, I assure you. There are a lot of people unhappy with the gall of the people who proposed the Buffalo Commons idea, much less this stupidity.
Posted by: Tom Montag | August 19, 2005 at 07:45 PM
Re: the Buffalo Commons, a world where good ideas don't give offense is a world run by public relations experts. (Hey, there's a thought...) When Pennsylvania introduced the first game laws in the late 19th century, after virtually all game species had been wiped out by market hunting, it was viewed as an egregious afront to private property rights and was violently resisted. Several early game wardens were murdered by the mafia. Over a century later, the concept of fish and wildlife constituting a commons is deeply ingrained in our thinking, and no one remembers that it was ever any different.
I'll be nice and refrain from reminding your readers about the precise extent to which large farmers and ranchers are dependent upon government underwriting, going back to the state-sponsored genocide against the land's original inhabitants and continuing with what can only be described as on-going ecocide against an entire bioregion.
Posted by: Dave | August 21, 2005 at 09:26 AM
"Fish and game laws" and "buffalo commons" are not as much an equivalency as you seem to imply, in my estimation.
Regardless, my concern here is about the colonialism inherent in a telling people on the plains: this is what we're going to do with "our" land. I'll recall for readers the story Harry Knobbe told me: He was in New York City. OPne of the fellows he met there said to him "You know, we think of your country out there as belonging to all of us, it's a shared national resource, and we want you to take good care of it." To which Harry responded, "You know, the federal building right over there, with graffiti all over it, we like to think that belongs to us, and we wish you'd take better care of it." "We're working on it," the fellow replied, a little mortified, what else could he say, "we're working on it."
If you are going to blast government underwriting for large ranchers and farmers, don't stop there. There's a lot more serious money than that being sucked from the national tit by a lot bigger and more powerful industries. And how do you define "large farm?" Is it three thousand acres in Kansas being worked by two cousins as a family "corporation?"
It always bothers me when someone looks over the fence and tell his neighbors what to do, while his own back yard is full of cars and car parts. There is some of that in the buffalo commons proposal, I think.
Posted by: Tom Montag | August 24, 2005 at 07:36 AM
I agree. And for the record, I am opposed to all government subsidies for everyone. As Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., likes to say: "Show me a polluter and I'll show you a subsidy!" I favor a return to local, small-scale economics and Wendell Berry-style agrarianism.
Posted by: Dave | August 24, 2005 at 06:34 PM
And I think, Dave, that the township is about as large as government should get. You see what happens when it gets bigger: they take your money in taxes and give it to the rich people.... (Oh, here I go again. Sorry.)
Posted by: Tom Montag | September 08, 2005 at 12:30 PM