Not so long ago, several dozen gray wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park. It was part of an Interior Department effort to keep down excess deer and elk populations, and to restore a natural predator to a habitat were it once roamed free. In a larger sense, it was also a recognition that the "natural" approach to public land management, the way it was done before elaborate human planning became the rule, is still often the best way to get things done.

The question that immediately leaps to mind upon contemplating this natural methodology is whether a similar effort might work well in the parklands of major American cities. More specifically, whether the introduction of gray wolves into Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, the Arnold Arboretum in Boston, Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, or Central Park in New York, might have a salutary effect on the local ecologies of these urban areas.

Opposition to such a scheme, of course, might be considerable—at least initially. One can easily anticipate the objections of neighborhood people: "A threat to children." "An affront to the homeless." "A danger to community security." The rhetoric is familiar. We have heard it all before.

Such quibbles, however, are easily addressed. Wolves, it happens, love children, and rarely eat one unless very hungry. More frequently, upon finding abandoned human children (especially twins), they raise them like family. When finances permit, wolf parents will even send their own pups to Montessouri or Friends Schools.

As for gray wolves in city parks being an affront to the homeless, well, what isn’t these days? A person has no money, no shelter, no regular health care, no meaningful job potential. What difference does a pack or two of hunting wolves really make to this individual’s current or future prospects?

Letting gray wolves (or even hyenas) roam the urban parks that dot America’s cityscapes is in fact a natural extension of our present national ethic. If some jogging attorney or stock analyst is too weak or slow to outrun the pack, let nature take its course. If the teen gangs that roam city parks after dark have members who insist on going off on their own, down they go and good riddance. The lame, the young, the weak, the halt, they will all just have to take their chances— just like the rest of us who are attempting to survive in contemporary America.

Let the real gray wolves, as well as the more figurative kinds, hunt freely among us. Without doubt, those with the strength to fight, the speed to flee or the cunning to evade will do so. As for the rest, well...