Interesting moosey concepts

I'll confess I only skimmed it because I have, like, this pesky work crap to do, but the premise sounds interesting.

Here we have a profile of one Gary Olson, founder of the Alaska Moose Federation. His main mission is to rescue, rear, and release orphaned baby meese into the wild. His eventual goals also include a moose petting zoo.

My opinion? I adore animals in general and meese in particular, and am one of those irrational bunny-lovin' tree-huggin' idiots who cries over animal testing labs, even as I know that some of them benefit the human species. It seems obvious that I'd support this guy. But... but... I can't help but see his well-intentioned quest as foolish. From my understanding, human-reared moose generally do NOT become truly wild upon release. They are habituated to humans and will hang around humans. I think they would weaken the species by teaching poor habits to their future calves, and it would only be a matter of time before somemoose got killed by a car, starting the whole cycle over again. Not to mention... petting zoo of undomesticated animals? Even if this is a minor part of Olson's plan, that he even thought of it tells me that his motives are more "warm and fuzzy" than protection of and respect for the species and for Mother Nature.

I do have sympathy for individual moose when unfortunate things happen to them, but I have no sympathy for moose as a species. They are not endangered, and if they were, the solution to that would be habitat protection and reducing the amount of hunting allowed, not human-rearing the offspring of road-killed moose.

In other news, fellow Fairbanks dry cabin dwellin' UAF workin' blogger TwoYaks reports his incredulity about the Goldstream General Store's being now owned by an ultra-conservative who spouts his ultra-conservative views at his employees, who sued for harassment and won. TwoYaks says about everything I have to say on this topic, so I'll leave it at that.