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In response to your Jan. 25 editorial citing writer Tom Venesky’s outdoors column about cougars possibly migrating to Pennsylvania, I, for one, would welcome this as I would welcome any development that restored the natural order to Pennsylvania’s woods.
You detrimentally effect the entire ecosystem when you eliminate the apex predators like the cougars and wolves that were hunted to extinction in this state. Now we allegedly have an overpopulation of coyotes and deer because the predators that kept both species in check are gone – leaving man as the apex predator. Humans do a poor job of promoting evolution by eliminating the biggest and best of species, rather than the sick or old that are killed by natural predators.
I walk in the woods with my dogs every weekend, and I would take my chances with cougars or wolves that go out of their way to avoid people. Cougar and wolf attacks are rare. There has been only one documented coyote attack in Pennsylvania in 40 years; by comparison, there have been millions of attacks by people against people in the same time frame.
Let nature – not man, who is destroying the Earth and its unique and beautiful species – control the woods.
Garry S. Taroli
Dallas Township