Feeding of the new lions should be left to laws of nature

Editor, Rwanda Development Board (RDB) or experts should devise mechanisms to protect the herbivores in the Akagera National park. Lions must feed and they feed on meat. This is a law of the jungle.

Friday, July 03, 2015

Editor,

Rwanda DevelopmentBoard (RDB) or experts should devise mechanisms to protect the herbivores in the Akagera National park. Lions must feed and they feed on meat. This is  a law of the jungle.

Concerned Citizen

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It is all about normal food chain. As none can feel pity for rice, goats or beans in the presence of humans, lions (and many other carnivores) feed on herbivores, which feed on plants, the latter feed on another category of beings…to a final return to soil to feed plants and the cycle goes on.

Telesphore Ngoga

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Unbreakable only if we so-called Homo sapiens (so-called because we are often not as wise as our self-styled moniker suggests) don’t tamper with our natural environment and its delicately balanced ecosystem too much.

Unbreakable too until Mother Nature decides it has had enough with the existing order of things and decides to destroy it all and begin afresh.

Earth has known a multitude of mass extinctions of living species, and then the cycle has started with new kinds of being. Scientists tell us the last of such periodic cataclysms, marking the end of the Cretaceous era and its domination by the great dinosaurs, took place around 65 million years ago, most probably as a result of an extraterrestrial impact by an asteroid or a comet.

As usual, the misfortune of some (e.g. a herbivore being eaten) can make the fortune of another (a well-fed carnivore). The extinction of the dinosaurs and other species opened a door of opportunity to other species, especially mammals (including humans) which eventually rapidly diversified and thrived. But we can be certain that sooner rather than later our own extinction moment will come.

The irony of it is that we, the ‘wise man’, may be its agent, as we recklessly ransack the bountiful granary nature has provided to us for our sustenance, as long as we take from it with moderation!

Mwene Kalinda

Reactions to the story, "How the seven lions were delivered to Akagera Park” (The New Times, July 2)