Steve Kimball makes a case for one view of human interaction with wildlife.
However, as is obvious from this little debate that has started up (again),
there is more than one view. I hope that we can engage in this discussion
without name-calling, which likening one viewpoint to "racism, fascism,
communism, extreme nationalism and other ideologies" would seem to be.

Everything we do impacts the survival of other organisms, on both the
individual and the species level. When we rehabilitate the 'possum to
return to the wild, we are allowing it to kill individual native animals
(making the assumption that it won't immediately walk in front of a speeding
Dodge Dart.) Maybe we don't see this happen, but we are still acting as an
agent in the destruction of other living beings. I, for one, am willing to
make a judgement as to whether the native or introduced species is "worth"
more, whether we're talking about opossums, feral cats, or wild horses. The
point is that we all make such judgements all the time. Jim Flynn wrote, I
think tongue-in-cheek, about relocating Norway Rats. How about the HIV?
That's a man-transported organism, introduced from Africa. Is it "cruel and
uncaring" to push for its eradication from its introduced range? We all
have an arbitrary line that we draw, separating what's okay to kill from
what isn't. We just draw it in different places.

Eric Kraig
Olympia, WA
kraige at oclc.org