San Antonio Express-News
SEGUIN, Texas — Despite criticism from environmentalists and animal rights activists, Guadalupe County officials stand by their policy of paying a $15 bounty for dead coyotes, a policy that has resulted in the deaths of more than 2,000 coyotes since it was adopted in April 1995.
"This is an important issue to us," said John Hadidian, director of the Urban Wildlife Program for the Humane Society of the United States. "This kind of indiscriminate and blanket killing of predators is an anachronism that goes against all logic of the principles of wildlife management."
But ranchers and officials in this South Texas county believe the program has shown benefits.
"The rabbits are coming back," said county commissioner Butch Kunde, a rancher. "I don’t have any calls from constituents anymore asking us to address the problems caused by coyotes. And the coyotes we have now are a lot healthier looking. They were all scraggly and diseased-looking before."
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