I might consider it genocide.

Come on in, the snow is just starting to collect in tiny cold corners on the ground about the den and the fire is stoked high. I love winter and I love snow. It's gorgeous to watch the sparkle of the ice crystals as they lay on the ground on a really cold night. However what I want to talk about isn't so nice.

So something tragic happened. A promising young artist was killed by two coyotes on a hiking trail in Nova Scotia. I am so sorry for this woman and her family and friends. The loss of life is never pleasant and I grieve for this loss. However I am also frightened for the loss that will begin now that this has happened.

If you read the article there is already one listed loss, a coyote shot that most likely was not a part of the attack. Add to that the focus of the article which implies people feel generally scared because of the intrusion of these coyotes into their lives. I disagree wholeheartedly with this assessment because it places the blame of the attack on the coyotes rather than taking a wider view as to the behavior of these animals and why the attack happened in the first place.

Don't get me wrong, I don't feel that this woman was supposed to die or I feel more sympathy for the loss of the coyote. Yes I share an affinity for these animals. But I am a human and am saddened by the loss.

What bothers me is this is exactly the kind of talk that gears up a community to kill animals indiscriminately without understanding the nature of the situation. I would lay money that something else was done previously to this that caused the need for these animals to attack something they don't normally recognize as food, instead as a much larger and more dangerous predator.

I will postulate that some form of animal that is seen as a nuisance has been actively targeted by the human community and killed off, and that this same animal was most likely a food source for the coyotes. A similar thing happened around here in Saskatchewan a few years back when the gopher and rabbit bounties were reinstated due to an explosion in their population. Rather than allowing the natural predators a chance to hunt these animals, they were destroyed and suddenly we had coyotes showing up in cities looking for food. Poisoning and hunting these animals doesn't just kill them but a great number of other animals in the area, increasing the need for food for the predators.

Not to simplify, I understand at this point there will mostly be a requirement for the thinning of the coyote population but it would not have been necessary had the natural hunting cycles been left alone to do their own work. My point is that it didn't have to happen, nor did this girl have to die had the human members of that community not seen themselves as somehow separate from the ecosystem and interfered overly with it to the point that the coyotes were forced to seek whatever food source available.

Now instead of a system that would check itself, we will now needlessly slaughter a great deal of the animals. Most likely due to the fear this killing will go well beyond the necessary means and lead to an explosion of certain types of rodents, which in turn will lead to dealing with that population by more direct interference ... do you see the cycle now?

And now I must also point out that my own belief is that these animals are just as important as we are in the overall cycle of living. They are a nation unto themselves and deserve the same respect as we might address another group of humans living in another country or culture. And while there would be an issue if these were two groups of humans killing each other, it doesn't require a genocide, instead a restorative action would be far more responsible, especially if that action would recognize how our own interference was what initially caused this issue. We as a nation must learn to temper our own actions when they directly affect another. Even if that nation is something completely different from our own perceptions.