(letters)

Vacat[ion]ing Coyotes

Your article in the september issue "Maine's War on Coyotes" [Incite] thoroughly disgusted me! Trapping and inhumane killing of any animal is totally unacceptable. I wrote my letter to Governor King, and I'm confident he will receive other letters from outraged people. I was a Maine resident for six years. A sign crossing over the bridge from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, into Maine stated boldly, "Maine: The Way Life Should Be." Does "the way life should be" include the inhumane slaughter and exploitation of wild animals? "The way life should be" should provide humane care for animals, and the state should focus its vacationland image on healthy, positive pastimes, not on murdering its natural resources.

Margaret Mary Brennan
Carver, MN

Congratulations to Ted Williams for focusing national attention on Maine's problematic coyote-snaring program. Maine Governor Angus King has received some 150 letters since the article's publication, largely from people "out of state."

In testimony to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (DIFW) earlier this year, Maine Audubon opposed the use of snares as a wildlife-management strategy for coyotes. In the next legislative session, Maine Audubon will work to introduce a bill to eliminate coyote snaring. We will show legislators that the program is ineffective and wasteful, and will discuss how it puts the federally threatened Canada lynx at grave risk.

The success of the bill, however, is far from assured. After Williams's article was published, the Maine Trappers Association requested a meeting with the DIFW to set new snaring policies. The DIFW invited sportsmen and trappers to meet, but not Maine Audubon, other conservation organizations, or even the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Continuing this bunker mentality will lead to more decisions made without the full range of information available.

It's time for Maine's DIFW and legislature to listen to their diverse constituency and fully include nongame interests in decision making. We have much to gain by working together.

Jody Jones
Wildlife Ecologist, Maine Audubon
Falmouth, ME

Look, Mom, No Wings!

After reading Ted Williams's delightful "Charlotte's Children" [Earth Almanac, September], I thought your readers would be interested in knowing about the letter Jonathan Edwards, the foremost Puritan theologian and philosopher in America, wrote in 1723 about the same theme. In that letter, Edwards recorded his observations of how spiders "march" in the air "from one tree to another, sometimes at the distance of five or six rods, though they are wholly destitute of wings," and of how the webs "reaching from one tree and shrub to another" enable spiders to go "sailing in the air." The letter contains a diagram and detailed description of these remarkable feats. It can be found in the Yale Edition of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 6, pages 163-169.

John E. Smith
Clark Professor Emeritus of Philosophy
Yale University
Hamden, CT

A Delicious Idea

I just want to congratulate you on your excellent article on CSAs ["The (New) Harvesters," September]! I'm so glad to see Audubon featuring stories about the kinds of alternatives being created in agriculture. The people out there building new, more sustainable farming models deserve all the credit they can get.

Marcy Ostrom
Director, Small Farms Program
Washington State University
Puyallup, WA

A big thank you to Audubon for featuring community-supported agriculture. My husband and I are enjoying our third year of organic fruits and vegetables from a farm in Oregon. Each week we receive a "harvest box." With our box comes a letter from the farm telling us about the wildlife that has been sighted on the farm and the bees and butterflies that have been pollinating the crops. The only downside to our harvest box is the winter season, when the box is discontinued and we have to rely on grocery-store fruits and vegetables.

Dawn and Doug Grafe
Toledo, OR

Don't Forget to Write
Send letters to Letters to the Editor, Audubon, 225 Varick St. 7th Floor, New York, NY 10014 or editor@audubon.org. Include your name, address, and daytime phone. Letters may be edited for clarity and length. To see more letters, go to Sound Off.

© 2002  NASI

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