We were so happy to hear your policy on the coyotes. While we also respect hunting, we agree that predators like the coyotes should be given a break. A friend of ours who owns a farm nearby was just expressing this same sentiment the other day — in her case, she wants to keep the coyotes around because they help her keep the rabbits out of her garden! Plus, to hear their haunting calls deep in the night is an amazing experience.

Kenton wrote a post about an encounter with a coyote on his other blog — http://kentonwhitman.com/2008/05/15/the-coyote/ It might be interesting to you.

Also, thank you for the tip on the book. This is definitely one we’re going to find and read!

It’s always so good to hear your voice here =)

There is a great book by Barbara Kingsolver called “The Prodigal Summer, a Novel” that delves into the relationship of predators and prey, it is set in the Appalachian Mountains and follows the life of a wildlife biologist living in the mountains who studies the coyotes residing there. If you’ve not read it already, I’m sure you would love it.

Rabbits like all small prey animals are a necessary part of the food chain. We have a pack of coyotes that live on our farm. The hunters in the area are always asking to hunt them. I deny them. While I am not against hunting, in fact my entire family hunts. I just can’t bring myself to let them hunt these important predators. Even with the presence of these coyotes the rabbits and squirrel are plentiful.

We’d love to hear more dialog on this — though we would tend to agree with you on all counts, it will be interesting to see whether the balance of nature catches up with us after all. Thus far in modern human history, we’ve remained relatively unscathed from major catastrophes (speaking on the scale of a large meteorite impact or major climate shift or self-induced nuclear holocaust). Our ancestors lived through a glacial period or two, but it sounds like they were relatively mild ones. How would our species fare if we were hit with a heavy glacial period, or with the global warming that you mention?

In no way are we trying to exonerate humans from their actions in regards to our planet, but it’s interesting to note that the history of our planet shows cataclysmic extinction after cataclysmic extinction. One would think that we humans would have noticed that and would be taking some steps to see if we can increase our chances of sticking around, but instead it appears that we’re all too eager to speed the process along. This supports the theory that perhaps humans aren’t really that intelligent after all =)

Ha! Wouldn’t want to hear that if we were rabbits, but it sure seems like that’s the way of things! =) Luckily they’ve been given some pretty nice tools for getting away from predators!