A Different Set of Facts on Wildlife Corridor

The Mountain Lion Information Center handed out misinformation concerning the Coal Canyon wildlife corridor in its July 9 letter.

First of all, no one “created” a wildlife corridor at Coal Canyon. The corridor has been in place for thousands of years. Saving the Coal Canyon property preserves the corridor. When the Riverside Freeway was constructed 40 years ago, deer were blocked from crossing at Coal Canyon. Deer and small creatures do not use the box culverts, although most predators have used them. Unfortunately, many animals still cross on the freeway, with disastrous results.

The wildlife corridor will not “funnel mountain lions into the Chino and Puente Hills,” as the letter says. The Coal Canyon wildlife corridor has been in use by mountain lions since neighboring housing went in, and for millenniums before that.

The corridor will allow deer, mountain lions and other animals to continue to live in the Chino and Puente hills by preventing isolation of wildlife in these hills. Entrapping a population of animals in a small area causes inbreeding and local extinction.

The number of homicides for 11 large cities in the United States in 1998 was 2,619. In Los Angeles, 414 people were killed by their fellow humans that year. Auto crashes kill about 40,000 people every year in this country.

In contrast, mountain lions have killed about 50 people since 1900 in the United States. Domestic dogs are more of a threat, as they kill 16 people annually. Wilderness dwellers have to deal with the rattlesnake, which is far more common that cougars. The reward for living next to wild lands is fresh air, interesting scenery, views of wildlife and peace and quiet.

Constance Spenger

Fullerton

The author of the letter, rather than being driven by fear, should inform himself of the facts about the balance of nature.

Besides keeping the deer population in check, mountain lions prevent overpopulation of small predators, like coyotes and raccoons.

In Laguna Beach, surrounded by scrub-covered hills, all of us know what happens to cats and small dogs that escape their protective owners in the evening. Those not hit by cars become dinner for coyotes, one of the few predators that have outsmarted humans in the survival game by learning to live among us.

I listen to the songs of our coyote neighbors after sunset and understand their preying on small animals, for it’s their way of living. Their role in the balance of nature is, in part, to keep rodents in check and perhaps, to protect bird life by teaching us to keep our cats in.

How many pets are killed each year by cars, how many by coyotes and how many by mountain lions? As for human prey, how many of us have been killed by mountain lions in the last century and how many at the hands of our fellow humans, by design or by accident?

As humans spread over Earth by the billions, are we to destroy any species in our path, not already driven into extinction, perceived as posing some danger to us? Or is what we are doing by consuming the planet itself the greatest menace to all of us, human and nonhuman alike?

David Perlman

Laguna Beach