Dolphins shouldn’t die for dollars in the desert

I’m running out of ways to say the same thing.

First there was the dolphin called Bodie. Then Alia. Then Khloe.

Now, a fourth dolphin, Kai, has died at the human playland/dolphin gulag called Dolphinaris, the aquatic Alcatraz on reservation land off Loop 101 and Via de Ventura Boulevard near Scottsdale.

It’s not complicated. Dolphins don’t belong in a desert. I’ve heard the argument that humans don’t belong here either, and certainly not the millions of us who live here now, scraping away native plants and trees and paving over the earth with asphalt and concrete. Building high-rises and housing complexes and shopping malls and ballparks and golf courses where there should be nothing but saguaro, ocotillo, agave, prickly pear, palo verde, mesquite, desert marigold and other wildflowers. Where there should only be lizards and snakes and coyotes and quail and hawks and roadrunners.

A reader who found my criticism of Dolphinaris hypocritical wrote that I’ve “got a lot of nerve complaining about dolphins in the desert when we ourselves don’t belong here and have done such much harm to the native flora and fauna, and have put the rivers and aquifers in peril with our outrageous consumption of water for ridiculous, non-native things like lawns and swimming pools. What’s the difference between dolphins being in the desert, where they don’t belong here, and humans being in the desert, where WE don’t belong here.”

The biggest and most obvious reason, of course, is that we came here voluntarily and we choose to stay here voluntarily.

The dolphins are prisoners. They are packed up and shipped to a place that is just about as foreign to their natural environment as possible, and for no other reason than to amuse us. Victims of our arrogance. Our conceit. Our sense of entitlement.

As if it’s perfectly logical to ask, “Why shouldn’t there be dolphins in the desert?”

It should be okay for a city or a state not to have every attraction, for residents to enjoy a place for what it is and what it offers and not feel as if they must uproot and transplant the whole wide world and all its wonders to a spot in the desert off the 101.

Dolphins don’t belong in what amounts to water-filled concrete cells so that paying customers can indulge their desire to “interact.” The Mexicobased company behind the attraction tries to justify its money-grubbing enterprise by saying that keeping dolphins in such a place and charging humans a fat price to hang out with them will somehow “deepen respect for dolphins and our natural world.”

A swimming pool is not the “natural world.”

And how do you deepen respect for ocean-dwelling creatures by locking them up in a desert?

These dolphins have committed no crime. They are guilty only of begin smart, social, handsome, outgoing and intelligent.

They’re often called the second most intelligent species on Earth. Behind us. Then again, I can’t imagine dolphins locking humans into a cell and charging other dolphins an exorbitant amount of money to mingle with us, so ...