Who Is Encroaching On Who?

A lady in Florida, America, had to call out the wildlife services because there was an alligator that kept crawling onto her property. After the incident had been dealt with the lady told the news reporters “I just woke up one morning and there was an alligator in my backyard!”….. however, a very switched on wildlife ranger was later heard saying that “The alligators woke up one morning and there were humans in theirs”.

We, as a species, have been around a fraction of the time compared to the timespan of all the animals. Yet we have managed to spread our living environment over such a vast area, in such a short space of time, that it is not surprising there are encounters such as the one mentioned above. It is very unfortunate though that it is the animals in 99.99999% of the situations that will be relocated or killed.

Killed? That’s right. Do you think that a small African village has the financial or logistical resources to deal with a lion attack or an elephant constantly raiding crops? Even in America, home to many animal/human problems many animals are killed. Compare the cost of one bullet to that of all the manpower, time and equipment to move large animals such as bears, crocodiles, elephants, etc.

Even an extremely wealthy country with many a good intention and excellent resources at hand can not simply keep relocating problem animals. The problem with that again goes back to the original problem of our widespread living environment. Just exactly where do you put these problem animals where they wont come into contact with humans?

If somebody want to make a nice log cabin in a mountain range somewhere or build a beautiful open plan house on the banks of a mighty African river that’s fine. But these people have to take the rough with the smooth. If they put themselves on the bank of a river in Africa, so they can watch animals drinking whilst the sunsets, or, they like to marvel at the coming and going of the seasons high in the mountains. Then these people have to realise that they are not at the top of the food chain any more and so do their friends, relatives and the rest of the world. When a bear eats the couple in the mountain or a crocodile devours someone from the African house spare a thought for the animals and put the rifles away.