The Unicorn Song

In my quest for a wilder life I’ve been looking into volunteer vacations, where you pay large sums of money to work (it sounds crazy, but how else am I ever going to get the opportunity to radio-collar a cheetah?). A lot of the projects involve wildlife conservation. I’m ambivalent about this. It’s sort of like going out one day a year to pick up garbage along the roads--things look better temporarily, but it doesn’t resolve the underlying problem. Maybe it would be better to leave the garbage where it is, a form of dispersed landfill, and let it get eyesoaringly high. The same goes with wildlife. So many zoos are trying to breed endangered species, so that one day they can restock dewindling natural populations. Even if that endeavour succeeds, won't they still be subject to the same forces that caused their numbers to decline in the first place, like loss of habitat and poaching? Maybe it would be better to let species die out. Nobody is really noticing all the little things that are no more, but if enough of the big ones go, maybe it will finally have an impact. Or maybe one day, elephants, tigers and rhinoceroses will seem as mythical as unicorns.