Doing Business, Diversifying

PABLO ESCOBAR was quite the consummate business person, quite successful. his advantage lay in the power of monopoly, In dealing cocaine, there tends to be little competition at the cartel level. Pablo, like fellow syndicate boss John Gotti, might have been a bit over confident; he strutted around town all dandied up like a true celebrity, which in a sense, he was, seemingly oblivious to his risk. Eventually he suffered the fate of many syndicate bosses; he was rubbed out. His one redeeming quality was that he loved animals. On his lavish and extensive compound, the billionaire kept many exotic species, including a small herd of hippos. Upon his demise they went untended, broke down the gates, and took up a new life in the Colombian jungle, eating grass, defecating in rivers, and breeding. Today there is an estimated eighty to one hundred of the huge animals, roaming freely, unharmed, undeterred. Chalk up another example of an invasive species, taken from Africa and transplanted to South America, disrupting yet again the fragile ecosystem. Or maybe not. Some biologists are taking a new look at this whole issue of invasive species. Invasive species have been relocating, at human hands, as long as there have been humans. Everywhere humans have migrated out of Africa, most of the large animals have become extinct, hunted to extinction by paleolithic human tribes. Plants and animals have been moved around and relocated for millennia, since well before the great invasive species process began with Columbus, wherein thousands of flora and fauna species were traded back and forth between Europe and the Americas. So much so, inf act, that arguably, the process of human beings switching animal and plant around hither and yon can, and is beginning to be viewed as simply another part of natural evolutionary process, people being part of nature, and all. So what if there are potatoes in North America and tobacco in Europe? Thousands upon thousands of times this has recurred, and yet, here we all are. Pablo's hippos, according to some, are doing a great job of replacing large animals which became extinct in Colombia thousands of years ago. When a hippo takes a dump in a river, it enhances fish and plankton alike, becoming part of and contributing to the abundance of life. Just a humans are naturally migratory, and con only with great effort build and stay put in cities, so it may well be that all other forms of Earth life are destined to evolve, change, and change places. We already have enough to worry about; maybe we should stop worrying about where everyone is.