This is in response to Dorothy Campagna's June 18 letter ("If coyotes put human beings in peril, shoot them.")

Mrs. Campagna rhetorically asks, "When did an animal's rights override a human being's right?" However, she never gives us any evidence or reason to suggest that this is even the case.

It's just rhetoric meant to discredit her opponents by making them into animal rights' extremists. Mrs. Campagna then proceeds to set up a straw man of her opponent's argument, complete with fanciful scenarios of marauding coyotes snatching children in full daylight, to justify her reckless solution of simply killing the beasts at will.

I implore the reader to recall a time when they bore witness to coyotes preying on young children in full daylight.

It's absurd on its face.

If this wasn't enough, Mrs. Campagna uses the Bible as a justification for her belligerent policy. But this isn't how I read the Bible.

To be given mastery or dominion over an animal doesn't imply that we may do whatever we wish. On the contrary, it is to be charged with the awesome responsibility of caring and loving for what God had created.

We shouldn't have a policy based on fear and mythology but resolve ourselves to compassionate solutions to help these misunderstood creatures.

This includes the construction of wildlife corridors and other measures which help these delicate creatures retain a semblance of normality in their precarious existence. Tad A. Kuchar Newbury Park