Dear HCN,
Michael Milstein’s
article on coyote control really hit home with me (HCN, 4/18/94).
During March of 1992 and 1993, aerial gunners, hired by the
Prescott National Forest in Arizona, flew past my home and took
down the coyote population in the surrounding hills by some 200
animals each year. The nightly caroling abruptly stopped and it
took months before new coyotes moved into the vacated landscape.
During the summer of “93 there were three fawns
with the small antelope herd near my house, up from only one the
year before. This success may have been a result of the gunning, or
it may have been due to the return of spring rains, which made the
Chino Valley green and signaled the end of the drought. There was
one fatality: My neighbor watched as a stray dog loped across the
road and took down one of the fawns.
But there is
more to this story, a side I have never seen addressed in the
arguments concerning coyote control. Gunning is conducted in March
directly before fawning or lambing season. This provides as much
time as possible for the young to develop speed and agility before
coyotes expand back into the area from other regions. What fails to
be addressed is the corresponding birth of coyote
pups.
Coyotes have their pups, usually two to
four of them, in late February and early March, and as a result
they hunt more heavily during the ensuing months. When 200 adults
are “controlled” by gunning, potentially up to 400 pups are left to
die of dehydration and starvation.
We concern
ourselves with lambs and antelopes because both are eventually
intended for our dinner plates, and we justify the thinning of
coyotes based on sustained yields of livestock and game animals.
But what justification can we give for tiny pups huddled helplessly
with no easy or humane
end?
Jessica
Kuntz
Colorado City,
Colorado
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline How do we justify the slaughter?.
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