In a tribute to the power of unintended consequences, the Wall Street Journal on Monday featured a page one story on the Komodo Dragons of Indonesia and how, thanks to the actions of environmentalists, they've started attacking people.  To read more about the story, follow this link to the Wall Street Journal article. The article was published on Monday, August 25, 2008 and was featured on page one in US editions of the Journal.

Interestingly, until recently, the dragons never bothered humans on the Kampung Komodo island which is also home to four fishing villages.   The 4,000 people and 2,500 Dragons coexisted peacefully.  Villagers developed traditions around the Dragons viewing them as sacred: the reincarnation of the deceased.   The villagers attribute the recent spate of Dragon attacks to the influence of environmentalists, particularly the Virginia-based Nature Conservancy which has managed the island reserve for more than ten years.

For hundreds of years, villagers fed the dragons.  In fact many of the dragons learned to recognize individual people.  A two-way bond existed between lizard and humans.  When animals were hunted, they always left food out for the giant lizards.    Small animals such as goats were sacrificed to the Dragons.   The islanders had a strict code against hurting the animals in any way.  It was an almost perfect symbiotic relationship.

However, over the past few years, the Dragons have started to turn on their neighbors.  Animals now routinely hide under houses waiting to attack chickens and other livestock.  A few villagers have been attacked; one young boy was brutally killed.  Villagers argue that the Nature Conservancy, in their zeal to protect the Dragon, has disrupted the bond that the villagers once shared with the animals.  The ritual sacrifice of goats is banned; villagers are no longer allowed to share deer with the animals.  Dogs, which once warned villagers of approaching Dragons and helped scare them off, are also banned.  The Nature Conservancy doesn't want the Komodo Dragons to become domesticated.  The Dragons, used to this good life in the form of the appeasement that they used to get from the villagers, now instead lay in wait under houses hoping for some easy prey.

So, a symbiotic relationship that had existed for generations is broken.  Perhaps the understanding of what actually constitutes an ecosystem needs to be broadened!

A komodo dragon eating a pig