The Coyotes Are Not to Blame
* I must take exception to your editorial (Valley Editorials, Nov. 21) saying that the city should reconsider its self-imposed ban on the trapping of coyotes.
As a valley homeowner and pet owner, I sympathize with those who have lost their pets to an attack by a coyote. But the blame is exclusively the pet owners’. Wild animals do not know ownership or boundaries, and this will never change. It would have been foolish for the pioneers of centuries past to allow their children to play in an unprotected yard, while sharing the same wilderness with predators such as the grizzly bear or the mountain lion. Likewise, pet owners bordering wilderness areas today must take the appropriate precautions. After all, it is we who are intruding upon their space.
Anyone who believes that it comes down to an “us or them” mentality has automatically declared war upon all living things in the natural world. I think it’s time for Angelenos to cherish the wealth of nature at our feet, before we lose even more. The Santa Monica Mountains have been a living, viable ecosystem for untold centuries, and are one of Southern California’s most valuable natural assets. This is how they should remain.
TODD WEST
Tarzana
* Coyotes prowling the urban interface should be dealt with as we deal with stray Dobermans, mutts and cats: A call is placed to animal regulation, the animal is secured and removed. For strays, this ends with adoption, claiming by the owner or destruction. For coyotes it will mean a bullet in the head.
Public officials responded to wildlife activists when they ordered animal regulation officials to stop trapping coyotes in residential areas.
Recently, at a meeting to placate residents’ concerns, our public officials gave the floor to these activists for childish theatrics and scare tactics (springing a trap and shrilling that “The coyote protects us from the hantavirus”). Then these officials joked about coyotes on Wall Street and urged residents to turn their homes into unsightly fortresses with outwardly angled, concrete embedded fences and “learn to live with coyotes.”
Let me get this straight. We are supposed to lock up the kids and pets, build a bunker as a home and “learn to live” with a predator. At the same time, we are supposed to “take back the streets” from thugs via Neighborhood Watch. Something is not right here in the Valley.
Public officials need to be reminded they are employees of the public.
When a child is mauled or killed by coyotes, I expect our public employees will rush to say that it didn’t happen or that the parents were at fault. Wouldn’t it be better to have animal regulation respond to a prowling coyote as police respond to a two-legged prowler? Wouldn’t it be better to have animal regulation coordinate its response with homeowners and Neighborhood Watch groups rather than shrill non-resident activists?
JIM WHITE
Canoga Park
