OPINION/COMMENTARY

The case for wolves – in Central Park

After years of intense study, a western-based environmental equity organization is advancing a bold new proposal to reintroduce wolves into New York's Central Park.

"There's no reason why New Yorkers should not enjoy these magnificent creatures; after all, if there is to be environmental equity, we should do all we can to spread the joy wolves bring to the people who are most deprived," said a spokesman for the group.

According to a recent study, the benefits of wolf reintroduction into the park far outweigh the negatives.

"About the only negative we could come up with is that the wolves would have to be taken from the West, which means that wildlife officials would have to find new ways to decimate the cattle and sheep these wolves would no longer be able to slaughter," the spokesman said.

On the plus side, wolves in Central Park would have no cattle to eat, so they would be very effective in controlling the dog and cat populations. In no time at all, the city could repeal its "scooper-pooper" laws. Even though it is widely known that wolves never attack humans and never stray from their assigned wilderness area, there would likely be a noticeable decrease in other nocturnal predators in the area. Drug dealers, prostitutes, muggers and the like could find the wolves to be a challenge.

Preposterous? This idea is no more preposterous than the proposal advanced by a New Jersey couple in 1987 to convert the Great Plains into a "Buffalo Commons." It is no more preposterous than the New York Times recent renewal of the "Buffalo Commons" proposal. It is no more preposterous than a raft of radical environmental proposals developed by the eastern elite and imposed on their western neighbors.

Because most of the land in the West is owned by the federal government, supposedly for "all the people," radical green organizations have claimed the right to speak for "all the people" and dictate how the land should be used.

Wolf reintroduction into many western states, forced by radical green organizations, has caused great pain and hardship to people who have to contend with the reality of the wolf myths. But wolves are only a small part of the mounting pressure on people who live in the West. The radical eastern green elite don't want people to live in the rural West; they believe this land should be returned to its wilderness condition for the benefit of "biodiversity."

Their public-relations campaigns and political lobbying efforts have been enormously successful, even though their claims of eminent disaster from biological degradation are based primarily on half-truths and outright lies.

The people in New York City should decide how their parks are used – not an environmental equity group in the West. The people who live in Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado should decide how their land is used, not radical green groups in New York or Washington, D.C.

The people in each state, each county and each community should decide, through their locally elected officials, how to use their own land and resources. Therein lies the rub: Most of the land in western states is not owned by the people who live there. It is owned by the federal government.

Now for a proposal that will make the radical green elite cringe: Return the land in each western state to the people who live in those states. The people who live in New York or Boston have no more right to dictate how Arizona land should be used than the people who live in Yeso, N.M., have a right to dictate how Central Park should be used.

The land and resources in each state should be controlled by each state; the federal government should get out of the land-management business. Period.

This is not a new proposal, of course. Western folks have been crying foul for years, with little interest or attention paid by people who live on the eastern side of the Mississippi. Eastern folks need to wake up and realize that if the federal government can control the use of land in the West, it can surely control the use of land in the East as well. And it's only a matter of time before the know-it-all, do-gooder elites' plans for biological preservation begin to push the people in the East as they have pushed the people in the West.

Perhaps the best way to get the attention of the apathetic easterners is to put a few wolves in Central Park and let them see, up close and personal, what magnificent creatures they are.

Henry Lamb is the executive vice president of the Environmental Conservation Organization and chairman of Sovereignty International.