The large carnivores in particular are objects of fascination to most Americans, and for every person whose sheep may be molested by a coyote there are perhaps a thousand others who would thrill to hear a coyote chorus in the night. Control programs generally fail to cope with this sliding scale of values.
All native animals are resources of inherent interest and value to the people of the United States.
Basic governmental policy therefore should be one of husbandry of all forms of wildlife. There is no mechanism to assure that the positive social values of wildlife are given any weight in decision making nor that control, when it is undertaken, will be limited to minimal needs. Whereas the decrease in the sheep industry as a whole would suggest a lessening need for coyote control, the shift to pastured sheep without herders counteracts this, since un-herded sheep are highly vulnerable to predation. Admittedly, losses would have been higher without coyote control. On many California forests the aesthetic value of coyotes greatly exceeds any potential damage that they might cause.