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State must change
coyote management
As the saying goes, crazy is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. By this measure, coyote management in California and nationwide has been crazy for decades, with constant, indiscriminate killing and taxpayer-funded extermination programs — all while coyotes survive and move into new areas.
Fortunately, California is poised for change. The state’s Wildlife Resources Committee will consider new rules to limit coyote killing. Science demonstrates that intense persecution of coyotes increases conflicts by encouraging more reproduction and opening territories to inexperienced, juvenile dispersers prone to seek food like garbage and small pets. Non-lethal methods, such as hazing, livestock fencing, and keeping pets on leash and garbage secured, have proven far more effective in reducing human-coyote conflicts.
The committee’s recommendation must be adopted ASAP so that the state can advance new approaches to coyote coexistence, which in these changing times are both very necessary and very sane.
Camilla Fox
Larkspur
Alzheimer’s centers
need more state funding
The 10 California Alzheimer’s Disease Centers, including the outstanding UC Davis Center in Walnut Creek, are in trouble, with some at risk of closing soon, potentially leaving Californians with Alzheimer’s in the cold.
The centers are a smart investment that leverages hundreds of millions in federal research spending to expand access to expert diagnosis and treatment for ordinary Californians, and to increase provider training. Sadly, the centers have been underfunded for years, while the need for their services has exploded.
I urge state legislators to actively support the Alzheimer’s Association’s request for a $2.2 million increase for the centers. Without action, we’ll lose these precious centers that California has spent millions of dollars and several decades to develop, and risk being unprepared for an increased older adult population that we’re already woefully underequipped to serve.
Partha Parthasarathy
Concord
Alcatraz is another
Trump smokescreen
Re: “Reopening Alcatraz no easy task” (Page A1, May 6).
As usual, Donald Trump tosses a wacko idea as red meat into the mediasphere, and it becomes news that fills limited news holes with nonsense.
These are called distractions aimed at taking our eyes off the ball, a con artist’s trick to keep us from looking closely at the dangerous things he is doing to destroy our democracy.
Reopening Alcatraz is right up there with making Canada the 51st state or invading Greenland — bewildering hooey. It should be treated as such.
Tom Debley
Walnut Creek
Co-ed sports answer
to transgender issue
Re: “Transgender athlete reveals pain” (Page A1, April 23).
Let me see if I understand this:
Most boys want to play sports only with boys.
Most girls want to play sports only with girls.
Some boys would like to play sports with girls while some girls would like to play sports with boys.
The answer is obvious: Create a third league and call it co-ed. End of problem.
Am I missing something here?
Ron Fitch
Alameda
High-speed rail is
too far along to quit
Re: “Trump blasts rail project” (Page A1, May 7).
I agree with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s response to the Donald Trump quote. The project is too far along for it to be abandoned.
The Central Valley link should be completed. After all, the San Francisco to San Jose link is electrified and showing improved ridership. Let us see if the completion of this link can begin to recover some of the money spent.
Perhaps if the Trump family could profit off the completion of the project, the president might not cut off the funding.
Gerald Veiluva
Oakland
Hamilton letter
predicted Trump
In a letter to George Washington, Alexander Hamilton wrote:
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“When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits — despotic in his ordinary demeanour — known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty — when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity — to join in the cry of danger to liberty — to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion — to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day — It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’”
His topic was demagoguery, and he was prescient.
Michael Youngblood
Danville