The veterinary hospital where I work is situated near the mountains. Coyotes and bobcats pass along the creek outside the back door. Skunks and possums are regular visitors. Once a young puma ran down the creek after getting scared by some dogs. A deer was hit a single streetlight down. It did a large amount of damage to the car. Owner of said car? Was not at all upset about the damage to his car, at least at the time. He was the one who came running to ask us to euthanise the poor deer. We think it had broken its neck and the cop who pulled the young buck from the road by his antlers finished the job as the deer bubbled his last breath just as we got there.
One of my coworkers hit a feral pig as well... those things seriously need to go away. They're not native, destroying the local forests and you want "dangerous"? I'll take on a pack of coyotes with glee before facing a single feral boar.
We've had several clients have cats be eaten by coyotes when they didn't realise that they needed to be careful. Most were not angry at the coyote, but rather at themselves for not knowing better and most now have their cats indoor only. We also have client cats that get taken by racoons, of which there is a large population near my house because of the river I'm close to.
The end result though is that we as humans keep wanting to pile blame on the coyotes. "Oh my pet." "Oh my cow". We've crowded too many animals into too small a space and they're trying to survive. If the situation was reversed, you know that we, as humans, would be cheering each cow we manage to purloin, but gods forbid something else take a calf or two when calves can be lost to a great many other things as well. Yes, I understand they're a form of livelihood, and they are important to the people who raise them. But coyotes don't recognise "fence" as a territorial line and it's frankly silly of us as a species to get offended by the deer in the neighborhood since after we expand into undeveloped areas.
As to hunting: Hunting of a predator is not subsistence hunting. Hunting a predator so that the deer rebound instead of allowing for the natural rise and fall of populations just so someone can go and nab a few instead of eating the ones that are commercially raised is not an answer. And a good portion of hunters out there don't kill the first deer they come across... they wait for a 'trophy' animal. They certainly aren't waiting for the gimpy disease ridden deer. Nu, those get left to stay in the forest and infect other animals because they aren't "pretty".
It also astounds me how we can be here, adoring our snakes, but looking upon a species we don't keep as a pet, and is native to the area and go "ewwwww icky i dun liek itz." Vermin are things completely without use. Coyotes keep down the rodent population, and help regulate the deer population because without that regulation they'd overbrowse their environment and then all starve to death anyways. Shooting them leads to too many deer leads to denuded vegetation leads to local environmental changes.
It's all a balance, and unfortunately we seem to have this mindset of "We want to have more deer to kill so let's kill the predators only now there are so many deer that they're getting sick and dying so we need to kill more deer but now there's too many deer so lets kill the predators..." It doesn't work, it's a giant spiral mess. Populations naturally rise and fall and follow each other. Keep your pets inside, and the coyotes will die off from lack of prey, deer populations will rebound and a few years later the coyote population follows... the way it's meant to.
The point is that there are many reason for these issues, and humans are a large part and our attitudes of entitlement only serve to make it worse. Predator species, for the most part, do NOT rebound well from hunting. Survival rate for mountain lions is 25% or less just to reach their first year of age, not to become successful breeders themselves.
And, as we remove individuals from the gene pool, so do we lessen genetic variance. Mountain lions, for example, take 3 years to reach sexual maturity for males, 2 for females, and females breed once every 2 years.
Let's start with a population of 20 males and 30 females, genetically distinct individuals. Permits are given to cull 10% of the population, and hunters take adults.
So, two males and 3 females are gone the first year, and half the females come into heat. 10 cubs reach yearling status. At that point, another 5 are taken. 3 males, 2 females. 1 of those females has a cub that cannot survive yet on its own, bringing the total dead to 6. We are currently at 25 genetically distinct females of breeding age, and 25 genetically distinct males of breeding age. The other females go into heat. 10 more cubs make it to yearling status. 10 new moderately distinct females come into reproductive age.
The population now totals 59. 6 animals are taken. 3 males, 3 females. 1 of the males is not yet sexually mature, the other 2 are genetically distinct males. 1 female is of the original population, the other two are of the new generation. This leaves 32 females, of which 24 are genetically distinct, blah blah blah.
Point is that over a few decades, those things are going to become inbred as hell due to genetic lines being cut off which is going to lead to lower fertility rates, higher deformation rates, lowered cub survival percentages and higher mortality from diseases, genetic and pathogenic. And while populations with inbreeding issues that are left alone will stay fairly healthy due to natural selection, there's nothing natural about us sitting in a tree with a high caliber weapon taking out the nice sleek large mountain lion rather than the somewhat ratty, scrawny looking one. It's bad conservation both for the environment and the predator. And don't try to tell me that people will take the ill looking one. Every photo of a mountain I've seen has been a "prime" specimen.
This is the last I'm going to say in this thread, particularly because I am so astounded by the callousness I've seen. The moment we stop recognising other creatures as distinct beings with varying purposes and thus worth just by existing is when we cease to see something alive and only see $. And that's why we have such atrocious conditions in a lot of farms and particularly with fowl. People stop caring about the fact that these animals do have emotions, can feel pain and fear. This goes for the cows we raise or the coyotes we see over that fence.
But finding a balance is apparently too hard. Much easier to just call something vermin and shoot it.
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