I applaud the Monitor’s editorial “A bad coyote bill” (Monitor opinion, Feb. 8).

Rep. John Klose, who sits on the House Fish and Game Committee, suggested extending nighttime hunting of coyotes, and exhibits a profound misunderstanding of the role of predators and a personal disdain for coyotes. Fish and Game wanted this bill pulled because the setting of seasons is traditionally done through rulemaking, not legislation.

In my view, the amendment should have failed on the merits of the coyote alone.

Decades of research shows that coyote killing does not reduce their population, and in the long term increases it. Biologists at Fish and Game understand this and in my view have an obligation to so educate their constituency. The fear of some hunters is that coyotes will deplete the deer herd. According to Fish and Game, the deer take for 2016 was the “seventh largest in the last nine years and is similar to the 20-year average of 10,912.”

It seems counter-intuitive to suggest that more hunting means more coyotes, and so less hunting (or no hunting) means fewer.

However, as responsive breeders, if a pack’s numbers are reduced, the survivors’ nutrition improves with easier access to food. The breeding female has a larger, healthier litter with more pups surviving. In populations of coyotes that are not hunted, two-thirds of adult females never breed. When the pack social structure is destabilized by hunting, the yearlings are freed up to breed and we see more coyotes.

There are other mechanisms by which this predator controls its own numbers, but the critical point has to do with territory. A territory has all the food, prey and cover a pack needs. They never have to leave their territory and they defend it, particularly when pups are in the den in April and May. The size of the territory and the prey within define the number of coyotes that can be supported (usually four to six animals in the spring and summer; mortality claims up to 75 percent of the pups).

We know there is no biological justification for killing this predator, and yet most state agencies, responding to myth and fear, allow programs and private efforts to “manage” or “control” the coyote. This is the often-cited mantra to justify coyote hunts: “They are a renewable resource, and no amount of hunting will ever get rid of them. They will never become endangered by hunting, so there isn’t any reason to worry about the coyote.”

An important mission of state Fish and Game agencies is the conservation of species. I fail to understand how the “management” of the coyote counts as conservation. A program of constant persecution of this species fails consistently to have any impact other than to destabilize packs and increase breeding, which feeds the myth that coyotes are “out of control.” The most effective control of coyotes is no control.

Coyotes in most states, including ours, are hunted, hounded and killed over bait 365 days a year and at night between January and March, their breeding season. To what end? And why do we allow night hunting at all? In addition to this pressure, coyote killing contests, such as the current Coyote Creek Coyote Pool in Rochester, awards hunters who bring in the largest and the most coyotes. How does this reflect, in any way moral or ethical, the true spirit and tradition of hunting?

The coyote performs useful services for humans. A single coyote could kill 10,000 white-footed mice a year, which would go a long way toward limiting the spread of Lyme disease. Coyotes can be a major player in rat control around small towns, farms and cities. So let that coyote in a meadow, deep in focus, all nose, eyes and ears on its prey, go about its livelihood and its role in wild nature.

(Christine Schadler is co-founder of the N.H. Wildlife Coalition and a representative for Project Coyote.)