Don’t Blame Wildlife for Human Error

* Three cheers for Lisa Paulson of the Veterinary Medical Center in Woodland Hills, the first interviewee to reflect knowledge in The Times’ focus on coyotes (“Pet in Fenced Yard Falls Prey to Coyotes,” Aug. 1).

It is not the fault of the coyote when family pets or even children are mauled; the fault is human. Developers as well as residents are guilty parties in the transaction of building and buying a home, respectively.

To purchase a house in a well-forested area (or one that was well-forested) assumes that habitats were removed. It is wishful thinking to believe that the developer would no longer develop had there been no buyer’s market to serve.

While the government fails to protect forests and wildlife, succumbing to the exceedingly influential, campaign-contributing developer, it is our environment--and nature--that suffers a bureaucratic fate. In this case, it is the animals that will suffer. Coyotes as well as bears and cougars face the same fate because people, unwilling to settle elsewhere, violate their home in the forests. The answer does not lie in the killing or capturing of the animal, but rather in relinquishing what is not ours: its home.

Animals, unlike mankind, were not given the ability to reason. They are forced to live on instinct alone. The animal is merely playing its part, that of the predator, and if you refuse to separate its habitat from your own, the roles will be reversed. Man was not born the predator, but was given the mind and the power to coexist peacefully.

CRISTI ANN FARRELL

Sylmar