Coyotes: "We will dance on your graves, puny humans"

Great photo of an amazing predator: Northern Alberta coyote, by ru 24 real on Flickr. [Click to embiggen.]

It's coyotes in the news week here in Bloglandia. A round-up of the good, the bad and the ugly:

The bad would have to be news of 18,000 coyotes killed by hunters in five months, brought to you by the Saskatchewan, Canada bounty program. Just cut off the paws and collect $20 per animal, and if it's easier to kill a few dozen coyotes in neighboring Alberta and chop their feet off and dump their bodies in front of someone's farm, well, keep in mind that there's a fine for littering. Littering is bad! [Photo of the carcasses by Rick Price, who wasn't anticipating a truckload of dead coyotes when he set off to photograph local wildlife last week.] Trevor Herriot has more about the consequences, intended and unintended, of coyote control here, on his excellent Grass Notes blog.

The ugly: that would be the let's-all-shudder-at-a-hick-and-his-dogs article by Juliet Macur of the NY Times. Quote: "Dogfighting became a felony in all 50 states in 2008, in no small part because of Michael Vick, the N.F.L. star who went to prison a year earlier for his involvement in a dogfighting ring." Seriously, that's an actual quote from the article. It's inaccurate, and of course dogfighting is actually nothing like hunting coyotes with greyhounds, but whatever. I really, really, really hate Macur's lazy mash-up of ignorance and condescension. I don't think it's journalism — it's just crappy writing.

By way of contrast, consider how Ms. Macur might have gotten along with the folks at the Master of Fox Hounds Association’s seminar, which brings us to the good:

In the months leading up to the Master of Fox Hounds Association’s biennial hunt staff seminar, we’d already heard a lot about Dr. Stanley Gehrt and his urban coyote presentation. He’d done this presentation at an MFHA meeting in January that had everyone talking, so we were especially curious to hear it ourselves. And, boy, was it worth the price of admission.

Gehrt is an assistant professor and extension wildlife specialist at Ohio State University. His urban coyote study in Chicago started in 2000 and is the longest-running coyote research project in North America. Using radio tracking collars, the study has followed 440 coyotes in 10 packs and revealed fascinating details about their lives, including how they form packs, which ones don’t pack up, how they develop their territories, what they hunt, and how they adapt to living in an urban environment. The results, as presented in his lecture “Uncovering Truths and Debunking Myths about City Coyotes,” were eye-opening.

Read the whole thing — a fine and fascinating read — over at Full Cry: A Hound Blog. Definitely beats suffering through a 1200-word mock-the-Okie piece in the NY Times.


Related:
MFHA hunt staff seminar, part 3: The Old Guns
Texas ass hat Gov. Perry shoots coyote [Makes me wonder how I ever manage to get a bunch of dogs in and out of the cabin, after dark, with coyotes dodging around in the shadows night after night, and me without a .380 Ruger. I don't pack a pistol when I hike in snake country, either. Daredevil is my middle name -- right, peeps?]

Double suspension [for Heather H]

Woo hoo! [Reference is to this post.]

Big whoop: Coyotes yip, shriek, howl the night away

" Anything you can sing, I can sing louder
I can sing anything louder than you
No you can't, Yes I can, No you can't, Yes I can
No you can't, Yes I can, yes I can!" Coyotes on Flickr by matt knoth.

Gah, I love this music. Great big hat tip to Camera Trap Codger, the man behind this beaut of a photo and many others.

Heard something like Track #3 right under the window up at the cabin this summer. Coyotes are loud. That scrawny chest hides a mighty amplifier. Track #6 and Track #20 sound like standard cabin serenades, the ones that wake me up at two or three in the morning happy to be warm and safe inside. Great vocalists, coyotes.



Wild Coyote Sounds at Soundboard.

More coyotes: dog snatched off porch; "kid fends off pack attack with backpack"

Coyote of the First Snows, by David Cartier on Flickr.

Coyote grabs Boston Terrier from front porch as shocked owner looks on! 70-year-old sister off-roads to the rescue! Dog is saved! And the kid with the backpack is OK, too. [I swiped the post's title from commenter Mike in that same thread, because it was irresistible.]

But note: neither the Big Bear Discovery Center nor the Big Bear Lake Animal Hospital report any uptick in coyote attacks. It's the forest, for crissakes: if cats and small dogs look available, coyotes will take 'em. The local paper hasn't published any articles on coyote attacks, and the only mention I've seen of the backpack-wielding youngster was in that forum post. Not that I'm cavalier about taking the dogs outside at night, up in Big Bear. I'm just sayin'.

Meanwhile, "Don't Feed the Wildlife" signs are installed in Griffith Park:

In a ceremony Monday, Los Angeles City Councilman Tom LaBonge installed the first of these signs. LaBonge told those assembled that he often sees coyotes on his daily hikes through the park but never feeds them. "We just say hi to each other."

It occurs to me that while LaBonge and Br'er Coyote are enjoying their Dr. Dolittle moment, we've hit Level 6 on the Risk to Human Health and Safety scale:

According to Baker and Timm (1998), there are several signs that indicate a human health and safety risk between coyotes and humans. The following, in order of occurrence, are signs that coyotes pose a risk to human health and safety:

1. Increase in taking of pets at night.
2. Increase in observance of coyotes on streets and yards at night.
3. Observance of coyotes on streets and in parks and yards during daylight hours, in early morning and late afternoon.
4. Observance of coyotes chasing or taking pets during daylight hours.
5. Taking pets on leashes and chasing joggers, bikers, etc.
6. Observance of coyotes in and around children’s play areas and parks during mid-day.
[Source (pdf): Management of Urban Coyotes and Attacks in Green Valley, Pima County, Arizona, by C. D. Carrillo, J. Schmidt, D. Bergman, and G. Paz.]

So, is chucking a rock [or worse] at every too-close coyote the best way to keep them wild? According to two studies, once coyotes have moved onto your porch, what gets rid of them isn't guns and such — what scares them off [in SoCal, at least] is trapping:

Baker and Timm (1998) and Timm et al. (2004) noted that of all techniques used in controlling problem coyotes in southern California, trapping had the greatest observed effect of re-instilling a fear of humans into the local coyote population. When 2 to 5 coyotes were trapped in a problem locality, the remaining coyotes would often disperse. [Source (pdf).]

I love wild coyotes. I love hearing them, and I love knowing that they're playing their part in forest and foothill ecosystems. But I don't want coyotes standing outside the front door and waiting for a handout or a pet dog to grab, and I don't think anyone else in Southern California does, either.

Trouble is, the concept of "re-instilling a fear of humans into the local coyote population" is offensive to many people in SoCal cities and suburbs, no matter how much it benefits coyotes. Trapping is anathema. Putting food outside [for feral cats, in particular] won't stop anytime soon. So the problems escalate, from coyotes taking pets at night to coyotes attacking pets on leashes in broad daylight, until a child is hurt or a neighborhood's cats disappear or a pet dog is snatched from an elderly owner and killed. Then something has to be done. I don't envy the biologists charged with keeping silly people and wily coyotes safe from each other.

Related:
Coyote news [from this blog]
Coyotes at home and away [from this blog]
More on coyote bounties in Saskatchewan
Special Report: On Coyote Attacks and the Death of Canadian Folk Singer Taylor Mitchell
Urban Coyote Symposium: Papers from the Proceedings of the 12th Wildlife Damage Management Conference
Information on Urban Coyotes — both from CoyoteBytes [website last updated 1/09 (?)]

Coyote news

Coyote at Canyon, by jrtchris on Flickr.

From prairie naturalist Trevor Herriot's Grass Notes comes word that the government of Saskatchewan is offering a $20 bounty on coyotes. An excerpt from Trevor's post:

The provincial Environment department has ecologists who know that this kind of measure does not stop coyotes from eating livestock. Our universities have biologists and ecologists who could explain what happens when bounty hunters start killing a predator like the coyote. As a “k-selected” species, the coyote regulates its population according to food supply and mortality rates.

If there is abundant food but adults are being killed, the survivors, who are also the more successful and wise, immediately increase the brood size and numbers of pregnant females within the pack. Trying to control coyote populations by killing them has been compared to bailing a boat with a sieve.

Then why the bounty? Trevor again:

An interesting sidelight on the coyote bounty: I have heard via the grapevine that some of the loudest complaints have come from sheep farmers north of the Qu’Appelle in the Cupar/Lipton area, where British farmers have moved in recent decades to set up farming [...] They are undoubtedly a welcome addition to the local farm community, but if they come from Scotland or England they arrive with a certain set of expectations and experiences — about wildlife and about the government’s role in making the land safe for farming.

Trevor's post reminds me of the well-known [to border collie people, anyway] description of the shepherd's dog in England, written by Johannes Caius 400 years ago:

Our shepherdes dogge is not huge, vaste, and bigge, but of an indifferent stature and growth, because it hath not to deale with the bloudthyrsty wolf, sythence there be none in England, which happy and fortunate benefite is to be ascribed to the puisaunt Prince Edgar, who to thintent ye the whole countrey myght be evacuated and quite clered from wolfes, charged & commaunded the welshemë (who were pestered with these butcherly beastes above measure) to paye him yearely tribute which was (note the wisedome of the King) three hundred Wolfes. Some there be which write that Ludwall Prince of Wales paide yeerly to King Edgar three hundred wolves in the name of an exaction (as we have sayd before.) And that by the meanes hereof, within the compasse and tearme of foure yeares none of those noysome, and pestilent Beastes were left in the coastes of England and Wales. This Edgar wore the Crown royall, and bare the Scepter imperiall of this kingdome, about the yeare of our Lorde nyne hundred fifty, nyne. Synce which time we reede that no Wolfe hath bene seene in England, bred within the bounds and borders of this countrey, mary there have bene divers brought over from beyonde the seas, for greedynesse of gaine and to make money, for gasing and gaping, staring, and standing to see them, being a straunge beast, rare, and seldom seene in England.

"... about the yeare of our Lorde nyne hundred fifty, nyne. Synce which time we reede that no Wolfe hath bene seene in England." All killed.

It gives me a certain satisfaction to know [with as much certainty as I know anything] that the coyote will escape that fate and dance on Man's grave at the end, bounty or no. Check out Camera Trap Codger's photo of the trickster: Coyote beautiful.

Related:
Coyotes at home and away

Coyotes at home and away

"There's another one!" Smoke and Landshark Lu hold the fort.

I started this post [photo, title] at the cabin a month ago. It was a banner year for coyotes up the hill: the local population was booming and flourishing, thanks, some folks said, to a spike in rabbit numbers. "They [the coyotes, not the rabbits — rabbits would have been awesome] are snatching little dogs right off the leash," warned a friend. Seriously, dude.

I was alone in the tower when a huge pack of coyotes began arguing in the meadow [...] I took a photo of my face as the howling and growling was splitting the night air. It was so chilling hearing these sounds that it gave me goose flesh. [Bill Thompson III]

Down the hill in L.A. last month, two people were bitten by coyotes in Griffith Park, and eight coyotes were trapped and shot. Public outcry in 3... 2... 1...:

The howls that echoed through Griffith Park on Monday were coming from hikers, parents and nannies -- not coyotes.

Park visitors were furious with a decision to shoot coyotes in the 4,210-acre park following an encounter between a man and a coyote last week.

Eight animals were killed before the eradication effort ended at 10:50 p.m. Friday, said Kyle Orr, a spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Game.

Park visitors blasted the hunt as overkill. They blamed the problem on people who illegally feed coyotes.
[...]
At a child-friendly play area called Shane's Inspiration, a group of mothers watching their youngsters frolic were saddened by the coyote hunt.

"Killing them is silly. They were here first," Coralyn Peirson of Studio City said as she sat at a picnic table and watched her 2-year-old daughter, Emily. "Of course, if one of them carried off my baby, I'd probably feel differently."

Probably.

In related news, Terrierman reported today that a young woman was killed by two coyotes in Cape Breton, Canada. Cape Breton! Their range is expanding, they are getting smarter by the minute, and we give them a hand, as in Griffith Park, by taking the stupid ones out of the gene pool. Amazing animals, coyotes.

I saw more coyotes in the mountains this year than ever. I saw them trot past the cabin at night and in in broad daylight. I listened to one holler under the windows at dusk. [Hear that? Scary loud. If a police car siren and a werewolf had a baby...] When I took the dogs outside last thing before bed, the coyotes watched from the shadows. They moved like ghosts, but you could see their eyes glowing. Nothing spectral about those eyes.

Smoke and Lu hate coyotes with the burning fire of a thousand angry suns. Lu puts every hair up from behind her ears to the base of her tail, barks ferociously, and charges. Smoke curls his tail over his back and makes a roar fit to wake the dead. He's a lean 63 lb these days and no, I've never turned him loose after a coyote. Too fond of my yearling pup.

I did have an awful scare at the cabin this fall when senior citizen Bounce, the best and dearest dog in the history of the universe, somehow slipped past me at the porch gate and took off after a coyote that Smoke and Lu had spotted in the buckthorn. Bounce has never had an entirely reliable recall [oh, who am I kidding (weeps). Bounce has no recall, period. She does whatever the hell she wants]. Her life flashed before my eyes. Bounce sailed after the coyote like a little white cannonball for about 40 feet — and then, wonder of wonders, she reversed course and ran back up the porch steps! Ten years off my life.

Related:
Hasta luego, coyotes
Wolves, Coyotes and LGDs

Coyote Attacks: An Increasing Suburban Problem

Hasta luego, coyotes

Took this snap [click for bigger] at midday on a road east of our place. Haven't heard any coyotes singing yet, though I keep hoping.

Of crows [and coyotes]

The trickster.

"Klein envisions a new symbiotic relationship between these intelligent birds and the humans that encroach on their habitat. ...Why not turn a longstanding rivalry between man and crow into something that profits both species?"

Why not, indeed? Today, crows — tomorrow, coyotes! Take a flying leap, Acme!

Wolves, coyotes and LGDs

Wolf concept .02 by Chris Do and the BL:ND team for Gap.

The wolf is a compelling, complicated presence in human history and evolution. He's more controversial these days than ever: some people pay to hear wolf packs howl on winter nights in Wyoming, while not that many miles away other people grit their teeth and curse when wolves kill sheep or a favorite dog.

The wolf's little cousin, the coyote, is one of my favorite creatures on earth. I was alone on a snowy trail in Yosemite once when three coyotes, big ones in thick winter coats, loped into a meadow maybe forty yards away, pointed their muzzles at the gray sky and whooped and shrieked like the devil incarnate. It was beautiful. Those three sounded like a dozen, loud and wild.

I love to hear coyotes sing when I know my animals are safe. The Daily Coyote melts my heart. But the suburban coyote that trots out of the Verdugo Hills and tries to carry off a toddler? Out of the C. latrans gene pool, you. The sheep-killing coyote? Toast. [Not that traps and bullets make a real dent in the coyote population: the irony here, I'm convinced, is that we're making the species stronger and smarter by killing the inept ones.]


Livestock guardian dogs, relatively new to North America, are old hands at protecting flocks of sheep from predation and other hazards:

"Kodiak, a livestock guard dog, stays with what's left of the flock of sheep he had protected from a barn fire near Carnation on Thursday. Kodiak's fur was singed while he stayed between the fire and the sheep, later running to a pond and sitting in mud." [Kodiak, a Great Pyrenees, belongs to Diane Pagel. Photo by Steve Ringman for the Seattle Times.]

Cat Urbigkit, Wyoming sheep rancher and author, has shared notes and photos of her LGDs with Stephen Bodio of Querencia: see the posts Flock Protectors and Coursing with Sheepdogs. I know zip about LGDs so can't comment on breed preferences in the U.S., but I've noticed that many flock owners prefer crossbreds. I think Maremmas are beautiful: you can read about Julie Poudrier's new Maremma — a rescue — here.

Meanwhile, to the northeast: is it a wolf? Is it a coyote? It's thriving, whatever it is, according to the NY Times:

Amid much fanfare this year, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service declared the western Great Lakes gray wolf successfully recovered from an encounter with extinction and officially removed it from the endangered species list. Under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, the wolf boomed in population to 4,000 in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin today, up from just several hundred in northern Minnesota in 1974.

But the victory celebration was premature, according to two evolutionary biologists, Jennifer A. Leonard of Uppsala University in Sweden and Robert K. Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles. The historic Great Lakes wolf did not return intact from the edge of oblivion. Instead, the scientists report in the online edition of the journal Biology Letters, it hybridized with gray wolves moving in from Canada, coyotes from the south and west and the hybrids born of that mixing.

Janet McNally of Minnesota writes that she needs six to eight LGDs at the minimum to keep her sheep safe from all that hybrid vigor. Click on Guardians at this link to read more about her crossbred LGDs.

Shepherd Bill Fosher notes the recent appearance of a wild wolf in Massachusetts, and suspects there will soon be "a movement to reintroduce this top-level predator into its former range in New England":

There's historical evidence that my part of New Hampshire was, in fact, home to wolves. So if there's going to be reintroduction, it will probably happen around me. I hope that the wildlife biologists have the common sense to work with livestock producers before the killing starts. The can have us working with them, or they can have us working against them. It's as simple as that, and it's entirely up to them.

For more information on wolves, see the following sites:

Dr. L. David Mech's International Wolf Center.

Cat Urbigkit's Wolf Watch.

For more on the coyote, see this detailed Wikipedia article, and check out the book by J. Frank Dobie, Voice of the Coyote. It's an old fave.