Wednesday, January 21, 2015 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Tales from a
Sisters
Naturalist
by Jim Anderson
Killing coyotes
for the fun of it
The recent coyote slaugh-
ter over in the Burns Country
is another example of some
sportsmen’s desires gone
haywire. Over the past 100-
plus years, stories of coyotes
being the worst nemesis of
ranchers and farmers have
been so blown out of propor-
tion that the minute shoot-
ers need a bigger target than
ground squirrels, they pick
the coyote — all in the name
of livestock protection and
sport.
Sure, coyotes will kill and
eat livestock (so will wolves
and feral dogs). That’s been
going on ever since the
wool-growers and cattlemen
decided public lands were
better for grazing than their
own fenced-in back 40. But
the presence of predators
alarmed the ranchers, and
they turned to the govern-
ment to help them out.
That was when the real
trouble started. The wolf was
easy to eliminate: the trap-
pers just concentrated on kill-
ing pups and moms in dens
and trapping family units —
bingo! The wolf was gone.
That worked so well, the
government set out to get rid
of the coyote the same way,
but it backfired. Instead of
killing them off, the trappers
just created bigger popula-
tions of coyotes, which only
became job security for them.
But it did far more than
that. The only person that I
know of who saw what was
taking place ecologically
was Aldo Leopold, a quiet
forester from Wisconsin who
worked for the Forest Service
in New Mexico, and who it
considered the “Father of
Wildlife Management.”
He tried to tell the govern-
ment and ranchers they were
doing it all wrong, both from
the methods of killing coy-
otes (and wolves), plus the
long-term ecological dam-
age that would result, but
the ranchers and sportsmen
had the bit in their teeth. The
wolf and coyote had to go.
The sport shooters who
participated in the coyote-
killing contest earlier this
month over in Burns did
nothing but satisfy their
urge to use their expensive
weapons and ammunition to
kill something and celebrate
their skills. Unfortunately,
they left behind an ecologi-
cal disaster in the sage/juni-
per steppe ecosystem, the
likes of which will out-do
the satisfaction the shooters
enjoyed.
Then there’s the ethics of
such events. I take no issue
with killing a specific coyote
who is doing specific damage
to a rancher’s livestock — it’s
an unfortunate consequence
of human/wildlife interac-
tions. But it was engrained in
me early in my hunting life
that what you shoot, you eat.
Sure, I’ve heard the old
sayings about how vicious
coyotes can be, but I can
say the same thing about my
neighbor’s dog that got into
my chicken yard and killed
all my hens. It just seems to
me a human being can do
better than surrender to the
primitive state of having to
kill something just for the
pleasure of it.
In 1938, the state of
Missouri asked the govern-
ment trapper to leave, and
a pretty savvy extension
biologist, Bob Smith, taught
ranchers and turkey farmers
how to remove the particular
coyote causing problems, and
leave the others alone. The
first year that program went
into action, deaths to live-
stock from coyotes dropped
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25
photo by Jim anderson
there he is, our native coyote, the recent target of sport-shooters who kill them for the fun of it, with the
mistaken idea they’re doing good.
85 percent.
Coyotes are a different
breed of canine than wolves.
They just don’t think alike;
they evolved over different
paths and different times.
Sure, they’re both territorial,
the wolf more so than the
coyote, but when you poke
a sharp stick into coyote cul-
ture they fight back. I caught
onto this back in 1968.
I was asked by the
Defenders of Wildlife to
be a watchdog over a gov-
ernment-sponsored coyote-
killing project on the Hart
Mountain Antelope Refuge
that was supposed to enable
higher pronghorn kid sur-
vival. The Defenders made
sure every coyote killed was
hand delivered to me and
a researcher pal from Reed
College to have their stom-
achs looked into for prey
analysis.
We looked at every coy-
ote stomach for a week, and
not one trace of a pronghorn
kid was found, but we did
find ground squirrels and
voles in great abundance,
competitors for green plants
that helped pronghorn kids to
grow up and become healthy
adults. Which goes to prove,
scientifically, that coyotes
are doing more “good,” than
“bad” — most of the time.
Oh, yes, we did find one sage
grouse, and I thought the
government trappers were
going to celebrate all night.
But what also got my eye
was a fellow working on a
table next to ours. He was
removing what appeared to
be reproductive tracts of the
females, and curiosity finally
got the best of us, and we
went over and asked what he
was doing.
His answer was some-
thing like this: “I’ve been
curious for years why the
coyote’s range has been
expanding ever since we
started killing them some
hundred years ago. I think
they’ve responded by leav-
ing territories and pair-bond-
ing behind and just moving
out on the landscape living
the life of vagabonds. Now
there’s one dog (male coyote)
running with several bitches
(female coyotes) and instead
of having three to five pups,
females are giving birth of up
to eight.”
Then he showed us the
multiple ovarian scars on
the female’s fallopian tubes,
evidence that the coyote has
been “getting even” for over
100 years of indiscriminate
killing that’s been going on.
We don’t have to pity
the coyotes; they can take
care of themselves. What we
should do is put a stop to the
senseless slaying of wildlife
to satiate the desire to kill
something.
We should adopt what
Leoplod tried to tell us in
1939: take the coyote out
of the hands of what is now
the Oregon Department of
Agriculture and place them
in with ODFW where they
can be managed as part of
Oregon’s wildlife ecosystem.