Protect our pets from coyote attacks

The prevalence of coyotes on the suburban landscape is the most recent disruption in the delicate balance required for peaceful coexistence of humans, vegetation and wildlife.

Coyotes like to eat things like bunnies and berries that abound in our forest preserves and yards. When a few get together, they might even take down a deer. And when those things aren't available, they're happy to eat the trash we leave out for the garbage man to haul away.

For a coyote, the suburbs are a smorgasbord.

It's no wonder that we frequently see them roaming office parks, along roads and sometimes through subdivisions, particularly at dusk and dawn when they're most active.

Unfortunately, this incursion of nature into our concrete-based lives has too often put beloved pets such as small dogs and cats in harm's way.

We've heard occasional reports of coyote attacks on pets over the years. But they seem to be growing more common, possibly because some have lost their fear of people.

We remind people to take the advice of animal control experts: admire coyotes from a distance, keep dog food indoors, watch small pets or keep them on a leash and never feed wild animals.

In Wheaton, where several pets have been killed in recent months, city leaders talked about hiring a trapper to catch and kill coyotes. Wheaton's not the only community doing this, and trapper Rob Erickson says it's more common than we think.

"They are just the first town that (the media) know about," he told staff writer Robert Sanchez. "There are other towns that I have worked for, and they've had fantastic results."

Killing an animal for doing what it does naturally to survive sounds cruel, we know.

But basic biology tells us otherwise.

Coyotes have no natural predators.

While we have heard rare, unconfirmed cougar sightings over the years, they haven't roamed the area since the 1870s. In addition, local ordinances prevent hunting. That's why they live longer here than in other areas, experts tell us.

We would not advocate an effort to head deep into nature to cull the unseen suburban coyote population without hard evidence that overpopulation has thrown off the balance that maintains the ecosystems of the vast natural landscapes in suburban Cook, DuPage, Lake, Kane, McHenry and Will counties.

We heed the warnings of naturalist Carl Strang, who told us that removing one normal-acting coyote makes room for one with bad habits.

But we support towns like Wheaton and Glen Ellyn, which quickly hired a trapper to remove and euthanize animals that have made themselves far too comfortable far too close to home.

Too comfortable, too close means too dangerous. We applaud communities that take reasonable action to protect the people and pets in our neighborhoods.