Rescuing the Freeway Foxes

We read the article “Foxes Put Agency $25,000 in Hole” (May 3) with a mounting sense of irritation. The title was guaranteed to incense, along with inflammatory statements such as “Fish and Game officials . . . already hampered by budget deficits and staffing shortages, said they had to delay other wildlife projects they believe are more critical so they could remove a mother fox and the six kits from an embankment of the Costa Mesa Freeway.”

Now the critics of animal-rights groups and the concerned legislators will jump on the bandwagon, decrying this expenditure as a waste of taxpayers’ money, and we think in some ways it was.

When situations like this arise, there are plenty of caring individuals more than happy to help out. One or two trained men or women from the Department of Fish and Game could have directed the entire project without the necessity of spending $16,250 in agency workers’ salaries.

So to all you critics of the cost of saving those beautiful creatures, complain not of the act of saving them--they deserve saving--complain of an organization that doesn’t know how to prudently use its resources. Complain about the way the Fish and Game Department is managed.

LEE HUMPHREY & JOAN M. ROSS, Laguna Hills