Making the world safe for predators

I remember in Britain an exercise in the primary school curriculum presenting in a sympathetic light a mink escaped from a mink farm - and helping them escape is a prominent concern of Animal Liberationists. Whether they should be in mink farms or not is one thing - I think not - but one place they should not be is in the British countryside, eradicating more of the other wildlife and also farm-life, than you could imagine even such vicious little creatures are capable of - damage including wiping out creatures that kept down smaller pests, and ruining riverbanks.

Certainly crocodiles should be a protected species in some proclaimed places, to avoid extinction - but to have them protected as more important than other forms of life including man seems going a bit far. There are also places where wedge-tailed eagles are not farmers' friends.

Lions and tigers are favourites for animal parks today - people drive through in cages (cars) to see them 'in the wild'. Imagine a scenario of really wild animals going wild again, including wolves, which are sometimes needed to cull the deer, but not otherwise

Dangerous dogs are kept because of dangerous men - and by dangerous men. There is the problem. But there are other dogs which are affectionate, and good guard dogs, without importing a new terror for children and old ladies. Freedom from fear is mocked when women, children and old men are afraid of going down the street. 'Safe in the right hands' - but what of the wrong ones.

Of course this goes for cars, guns and sex too - we arent making any of these outright illegal either. But we need all three and do not have adequate substitutes. And there are good animal substitutes that are every bit as sweet and affectionate and pretty as bull-terriers. Encourage them - or a nasty future.

The nasty people get nasty dogs, pythons and crocodiles - and then let them go wild in the bush, killing off everything.

The nice people protect all our native wild-life regardless. In our reserve, the Australian raven terrorises the other birds and dive-bombs the smaller dogs. Protected. Who dare send them away?