Coyote control

by Doug Crowe
Wednesday, March 5, 2008 2:56 PM MST

A while back, the Star-Trib ran a piece titled "Coyote control helps antelope."

The article summarized a research project linking coyote population suppression in selected areas to increases in antelope numbers. It went on to report the most economically feasible method of controlling coyotes was aerial gunning (shooting them from an airplane).

In point of fact, wildlife managers have long known some wildlife populations can benefit from a local reduction in coyote numbers. Usually such benefit is a manifestation of increased fawn survival.

Further, studies have shown predator control to be most effective when applied in limited areas as an aid to the survival and establishment of transplanted animals, which are initially few in number and unfamiliar with the areas into which they have been introduced.

Once established, most prey populations generally are able to take care of themselves if forage, water and cover are present in the proper juxtaposition.

When this is the case, further coyote control is often not cost effective. Not only that, the pesky little buggers sometimes respond to intensive control measures with increased litter sizes.

That results in a vicious cycle of control and response that costs a lot of money and results in very little long-term gain.

Of course, coyotes couldn't care less how much money we spend. Over the last 150 years, we have spent untold millions of dollars as we pursued them with traps, poisons, rifles, fumigation of dens, aerial assault, etc. -- everything but nuclear weapons.

Yet they continue on their merry way, expanding their distribution and increasing their numbers with barely a blip on the growth curve.

Since we have arrived in this hemisphere, coyotes have gone from being a species confined largely to western mountains and plains to a cosmopolitan species now present from 10 degrees north latitude in Alaska to 70 degrees south latitude in Costa Rica.

Along this gradient, they are to be found from coast to coast in every Canadian province and all U.S. states with the exception of Hawaii. Within this distribution, they continue to demonstrate their uncanny ability to survive and reproduce successfully from the highest mountains in the Rockies to below sea level in Death Valley.

They also have made themselves at home in such metropolitan areas as Los Angeles, New York, Toronto and Mexico City.

For me, nothing so demonstrates the adaptability and perseverance of this critter as an anecdote related by J. Frank Dobie in his delightful book, "The Voice of the Coyote": "In 1873, the first railroad on the Pacific slope was a short line connecting Walla Walla, Wash., with the port of Wallula. The first 10 miles of the road had wooden rails, long stringers laid across the ties.

"Iron wheels wore the wood severely, so the company plated these stringers with strips of 'Mexican iron' rawhide. Such strips, when moistened, stretched, cleated down and dried resisted wheel-grinding.

"But they were not tough enough to resist an element that had not been taken into account. That winter the coyotes ate them up."

Against this type of creative survivorship, I think we may have to admit that "coyote control" is a contradiction in terms. Although, it is beginning to appear that in and around Yellowstone Park wolves are doing a fairly efficient job of keeping coyotes in check. That cracks me up.

Obviously, God has a sense of humor!

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