[at-l] Our wild national parks

[David Addleton]

I can remember as a kid living in wild places in Asia. I had friends who
grew up in wild places in Africa. In both those places the community of
neighbors had no problem putting down wild animals that posed a hazard to
visitors and residents alike, or to the residents live stock. The same
applied to dogs kept to guard people and belongings. Sometimes they'd get
rabies, and an owner or a neighbor would put it down. I get the impression,
tho' I'm not certain of it, that the same state of affairs governs in Alaska
with respect to bears where they and humans live in close proximity; and
probably, too, for their guard dogs, tho' I suspect local law holds the
owner liable for the dog's behavior, whether rabid or not, if the behavior
causes harm.

Whether you regard national parks as "farms" for nature or not, they've got
people in charge of and responsible for the wild-life there. Urban folks
want to keep them "wild" while local farmers get angry because they cannot,
for example, protect their livestock from the re-introduced wolves. City
folk are telling the ranchers how to regard and treat the wolves, largely
because of how we run our government and put people in charge of our public
lands. Protect your kid from a bear and you're liable to the rest of us for
harming the bear when you protect your child: you'll get charged for killing
the bear that attacked your camp in some lands; in other lands, you won't.
The park personnel are just enforcing the rules we've asked them to enforce
in a particular area which we happen to call a National or State park,
National or state forest, or whatever.

Blame it on the lawyer, if you like. I don't think it's the lawyer's fault
that animals behave as animals and that humans behave as humans and that
when you mix the two either the animal or a human gets hurt. I do think that
humans own responsibility for the animals placed under their protection and
control, whether its in a National Park, a farm, or an apartment. And I
think its the people we've chosen to write the laws that makes it a mixed
up, muddled up world.

On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 10:14 AM, Nina Rogers <infpeace at gmail.com> wrote:

> Here's a recent op-ed piece from the NYT on our untamed wilderness. The
> general theme: "No matter how many lawyers tread the landscape, it’s
> impossible to safety-proof a national park."
> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/nature-without-the-nanny-state/
>
> My apologies if this has already been posted. I'm about a week behind on
> e-mail.
>
> Waterfall
>
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> at-l at backcountry.net
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>
>


-- 
With best regards,

David F. Addleton
Attorney at Law

practicing consumer law as
ADDLETON LTD. CO.
355 Cotton Avenue
Macon Georgia 31201

478.227.9007, office
888.398.0898, fax

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