Should Coyote Trapping Resume or Should They Be Left Alone?

* I found Bill Bialosky’s assertion that “this city has an obligation to protect . . . our pets” amazing (Valley Commentary, Dec. 26). Even a cursory examination of local news attests to the fact that revenues are diminishing. Should we really expect taxpayers to pay for trapping and killing coyotes on a regular basis to protect the pets of some individuals?

I attended the community meeting a few weeks ago at El Camino High School. A representative from the city animal regulation authorities stated that the overriding consideration for elimination of the trapping program was financial. It was pointed out that area residents are free to hire a state-licensed trapper to capture and kill coyotes in their yards. It soon became clear that a vocal group of residents were averse to taking responsibility, financial or otherwise, for their pets. They want the taxpayers to foot the bill.

The fact is, coyotes are not a danger to humans. Do we really have a need, much less a right, to demand that they be killed because we don’t want to be bothered to watch our pets or small children?

LORRAINE PRICEMAN

Woodland Hills

* Early this morning, my son came into the kitchen and told me to go out and count my chickens, as there had been a disturbance at 4:36 a.m.

Sure enough, another fowl was missing. It was my elderly, retired hen, the lone survivor of a flock of golden nugget layers that once strutted and clucked in my back yard and kept us in fresh eggs. She was the third nocturnal casualty of this bitter season.

After the rooster and two of my neighbor’s roosters and one of their fat mallard ducks vanished in the night, after we found a severed chicken leg partially buried beneath one of my sycamores, after that grisly souvenir also vanished in the night, an officer of the Department of Animal Regulation visited us, examined our yard and the evidence, found a few canine tracks and some telltale marks on our fences, the problem was diagnosed: “Coyotes,” he said.

He also informed us of several daylight sightings of these predators. One of them was especially alarming, as it involved a wild canine stalking a toddler near Calvert Street and Valley Circle Boulevard, a location well north of the U.S. 101 and Ventura Boulevard. I also live well north of these arteries.

Now, I don’t suppose the commissioners of the Department of Animal Regulation really care about my innocent little white chickens. However, I do imagine they might care about the possibility of a coyote attack upon an equally innocent human child, and if they don’t care directly about the child itself, then perhaps these commissioners care enough about their own backsides to choose to avoid a future accusation of having ignored or tolerated an unacceptable risk to public safety.

I am suggesting that the commissioners need to balance the interests involved and reverse the error of their predecessors, who assumed that the position of animal rights lobbyists was correct without any critical investigation whatsoever.

P.S.--I wrote the above on Dec. 26. I went out Jan. 3 to feed my shrinking flock of chickens and discovered new carnage. Strewn on the ground were masses of snowy feathers and the partly dismembered remains of all my silky chickens. Now I have none.

SUSAN KLENNER

Woodland Hills

* People who want us to make way for relentless urban sprawl by savagely killing coyotes are engaging in a classic exercise in shortsightedness.

There were human beings on this planet living together socially 20,000 years ago. They came and went without leaving much of a trace. But we might wonder what life will be like for our progeny in Southern California 20,000 years from now. Will there be no wild lands or animals left? Will the surface of the Earth become one continuous city? How will our descendants feel about their ancestors?

Human beings are not a separate case of creation outside of nature. We are an intrinsic part of nature, as are the few remaining coyotes, foxes and cougars struggling to survive in the dwindling woodlands and chaparral. When we kill them, we only diminish ourselves and our future.

JOHN E. NELSON

Tujunga