THE WAR AGAINST THE EASTERN COYOTE

...The last coydog I saw looked like a labrador retriever...

...Nature, which put the creature here in the first place, seems to be doing a good job on its own...

...While Eastern coyotes breed true to type, retaining their physical and "spiritual" characteristics, coydogs usually lose all semblance of their physical coyote traits after one or two generations...

...sometimes they may bring down an old, weak, or otherwise hampered specimen, thus fulfilling the natural selection role traditionally played by the wolf...

...Instead, she concluded, the animal was an entirely new species, which had arrived in the New England forests in response to the region's needs, filling the ecological niche vacated by the wolf s demise...

...The way they raise sheep out West is like nothing you'd ever see here," Marshall agreed...

...Because of its varied diet, the creature helps control population explosions of troublesome insects and rodents and other creatures considered harmful by humans...

...Wild canines have always provoked the human imagination, however, so it is little wonder that in the short time we have known it, the Eastern coyote has acquired an image based more on fantasy than fact...

...They sometimes show affection to humans, but can never be tamed...

...Already, its reputation knows no bounds...

...Because it was considered a threat to livestock and human civilization, the early settlers also placed a price on the head of the Eastern timber wolf...

...In a series of television interviews and newspaper articles in these states, farm bureau officials characterized the region's new canine predator as a menace to domestic livestock, threatening to touch off a shoot-on-sight offensive among the region's farmers...

...Coydogs, on the other hand, have no strong strain of wild genetic inheritance...

...Most references to coydogs are inaccurate, but some of these creatures, too, exist...

...The American Farm Bureau Federation has long waged a war on the coyote of the western plains...

...Their high, bounding gait gives them a strong natural advantage when running in such terrain...

...Then they leave the parents to find their own territory...

...The complex process of environmental adjustment in the natural world is a perpetual drama but it is subtle and unnoticeably gradual, occurring over ages that make human life spans seem like long holiday weekends...

...According to a Vermont Fish and Game Department study, the stomachs of Eastern coyotes taken in that state contain, in order of frequency, small rodents, berries and other plant materials, deer remains, snow-shoe hare, cottontail rabbits, wood-chucks, insects, and small birds...

...The coyote's stomach was packed full of red-legged grasshoppers...

...The bottom line is that they're here and we're stuck with them whether we like it or not," Wiley observed...

...and mean ("kills wantonly, massacring his victims without feeding on them, killing for pleasure" is how one hunter put it...

...A "fact sheet" obtained from the New Hampshire Farm Bureau lists other Eastern coyote "favorite foods" — in order — as "poultry, calves, and game...

...One prime reason for the bounty proposals, however, is the fear the Eastern coyote will compete with men as a predator of the region's most celebrated big game animal, the white-tailed deer...

...Those deer which are caught will in all likelihood be the old, sickly, or winter-starved specimens...

...During the last 300 years much of this region has undergone more drastic environmental alteration than any other broad section of North America at the hands of early colonists and later generations of farmers and timber cutters who stripped the wilderness for food and lumber, only to abandon it to the advancing forest once again...

...More than 600,000 Plains coyotes have been killed in the last decade by private exterminators as well as Federal agents who work to make the prairies safe for sheep...

...The moose almost vanished at the hunter's gun, while the bears diminished and beavers became virtually extinct as millions of their pelts were shipped to Europe...

...A true coydog is the result of cross breeding between an Eastern coyote and a feral dog...

...Though rumors of a new, wolf-like creature have been heard in trappers' cabins and backwoods retreats for decades, no reliable sighting of the Eastern coyote was recorded in New England until 1944, in New Hampshire...

...Occasionally, Eastern coyotes do hunt deer, to be sure...

...At one time or another, legislation has been proposed in all northern New England states to exterminate the creature by establishing a bounty on the Eastern coyote...

...Admitting that there has been no widespread Eastern coyote predation on sheep herds to date — and pausing to puzzle over the fact, in light of the sheep's dubious distinction as "favorite" coyote food on the farm bureau's list — Marshall nevertheless used the TV limelight to suggest an offensive against the Eastern coyote during the fall shooting season...

...After living with and observing more than 100 specimens over a seven-year period, Silver concluded that the creature was neither an eastern version of the western or Plains coyote, nor a hybrid, since its genetic character remained stable through generations of breeding...

...Henry Laramie, a veteran woodsman and superintendent of game management with the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, calls the bounty proposal "futile and stupid" — futile because there is no way a bounty is going to wipe out the shy, resourceful coyote, and stupid because there is no need to...

...The Eastern coyote is no more dangerous than a fox," Laramie says...

...But wildlife biologists have resisted the effort...

...he continued...

...Those few gotten during the hunting season won't affect the population...

...Otherwise, the chase is no contest...

...Before the close of the Eighteenth Century, settlement of most of the New England interior was complete...

...According to Joe Wiley, the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department's Eastern coyote expert, "The American Farm Bureau Federation has been causing a lot of trouble out West" since the signing of a Presidential order restricting the use of some cyanide devices for poisoning coyotes...

...But it is not the human species that is threatened — it is the Eastern coyote...

...These creatures can sustain a 75 per cent loss each year for a long time and still reproduce to stable levels...

...Nature seems to be doing a good job...

...They'll walk on a leash, eat from a human hand, and can be trained to sit, stand, or roll over...

...Yet film clips from the western Farm Bureau movie were scheduled for the television news report of Eastern coyotes in New Hampshire...

...Here, deep in the wilderness, and on the fringes of highways, industrial development and human habitation, in what amounts to little more than a millisecond on the evolutionary time clock, an entirely new animal species has evolved...

...fierce ("enough to make a fearless dog turn tail...

...Currently, the Eastern coyote is unprotected throughout its range — though trapping is regulated in some New England states, since coyote pelts are now priced at about $75 each, on the average...

...The weapons are helicopter gunships, triggered cyanide traps, and poisoned carcasses that treat their victims to a slow, lingering death on the open plains...

...If you ever have a chance to see an Eastern coyote, you'll never forget it...

...Still, the wild canine's identity was questioned for many years...

...This may be rabbits during the high point in the rabbits' population cycle, rats when they are most plentiful, and woodchucks, snakes, and grasshoppers when they are abundant," helping to maintain a balance among the ecosystem's various wildlife species...

...If you passed a coydog on the street, you'd probably never recognize it...

...For most of the time since the last ice sheets receded from the region some 15,000 years ago, New England was dominated by dark, dank forests of mammoth spruce and fir, interspersed with lush meadow marshes and stands of white birch and other deciduous trees...

...Yet even some western sheep and cattlemen, after years of trying to eliminate the coyote, are now striving to maintain their populations for the predator service they provide...

...For most of the time since the New Hampshire discovery, the creature was dismissed as a "coydog," reflecting the notion that it was an isolated offshoot of a wandering western coyote mating with a domestic dog that had taken to the wilds...

...Wiley, who is conducting an ongoing study of the creature's eating habits by examining about fifty carcasses each year, said the Eastern coyote is not a threat to farm or wild game animals...

...The aboriginal peoples inhabiting the land lived in harmony with abundant herds of moose and caribou, beavers bigger than bears, and a rich assortment of other wildlife that included roaming packs of timber wolves...

...In an appearance on New Hampshire's only commercial television station, for example, Kenneth Marshall of the state Farm Bureau Federation warned that an increase in the state's sheep population — now numbering about 15,000 — may cause the Eastern coyotes "to turn to their favorite food, which is sheep...

...Eastern coyotes maintain strong family units — the "wolf packs" sometimes reported in the region — until the pups are about a year old...

...Smaller than a timber wolf but with a thick, silver-grey coat and a magnificent bushy tail, the Eastern coyote nevertheless stands taller, is heavier, and has larger teeth and a larger brain than its western counterpart...

...Through relentless persecution, coupled with destruction of the creature's habitat and food supply, the haunting cry of the wolf disappeared from the region before the dawn of the Twentieth Century...

...This primitive, pristine existence came to an end with the arrival of the white man...

...One Vermont wildlife official tells a tale that illustrates the coyote's helpfulness — as well as human misunderstanding of the creature...

...Their natural populations are limited by their food supply, and if they are preyed on heavily by man, the female coyotes will begin breeding in their first rather than their second year, and the litter size will be larger...

...Where other species have struggled and failed, the Eastern coyote has moved right in and is thriving...

...If they are left alone, they will naturally limit themselves by the available food supply...

...Passenger pigeons, which once darkened the skies like vast storm clouds, were sent by the barrelful to the metropolitan food markets, until they disappeared...

...In fact, Vermont officials conclude that recent heavy deer losses may be in large part responsible for the Eastern coyotes' population expansion, since the predator is also a scavenger that makes good use of winter-killed carcasses...

...But neither bounties nor scare tactics are needed to manage the Eastern coyote...

...The war against the Eastern coyote New species is the victim of propaganda Michael Harris Suddenly, but quietly and all but unnoticed by the swirling tides of humanity flooding across the land, one of the most astounding natural phenomena of the Twentieth Century has unfolded in the dense woodlands of northern New England...

...Naturalists and wildlife biologists have greeted the appearance of the Eastern coyote with excitement, since its arrival in this age of near-universal environmental degradation offers some hope that humanity has not yet subdued the biological vigor of nature's wildlife community...

...Facts about the Eastern coyote notwithstanding, a new propaganda campaign has emerged against the creature in Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, touched off by the American Farm Bureau Federation...

...Meet the 'coydog' Though the mystery of the Eastern coyote's ancestry has pretty much been settled — the best theory is that our coyotes are descended from a northern subspecies of coyote found in the northern mid-western states and south-central Canada that picked up some wolf blood from still-existing Ontario populations — talk about coydogs persists...

...While Plains coyotes move at a trot, the gait of the Eastern coyote also resembles the lope of a miniature wolf...

...But the popular notion that a canine predator has only to wander into a forest glade, locate an innocent doe or helpless fawn, and pounce on it for an instant meal is terribly inaccurate...

...Stomach analysis of Eastern coyotes shot in some states has indeed revealed deer remnants...

...Once again, though, as the century draws to a close, an eerie howl is piercing the forest stillness...

...strong ("the capacity to jump ten feet in a leap...

...It was the organization's national president that kicked this whole thing off in New Hampshire," he said...

...Such myths have generated something like hysteria in some quarters...

...I have seen both Eastern coyotes and coydogs firsthand, and believe me, there is no mistaking the two...

...You know, it's ironic," Wiley reflected...

...We can kill them and put a bounty on them, but it's not going to do any good...

...This often maligned predator had only been having a good time, and was actually helping the farmer when he met his demise...

...In the long run, then, the Eastern coyote participates in the improvement of the deer herd...

...Indian accounts and the records of early settlers revealed the existence of no coyotelike creature...

...It's part of our fauna, and I think it will be for a long time...

...Though ex-tremely uncommon, some coydogs have been produced in the wilds, and others have been reared in captivity for scientific purposes...

...The carcass was given to department biologists for examination...

...White-tailed deer typically inhabit woodlands full of natural obstacles like brush, fallen trees, stumps, and rocky outcroppings...

...As part of its propaganda campaign against the Plains coyotes, the Farm Bureau Federation circulates a full-length color feature film to schools and social clubs depicting, in Marshall's words, "some real action...

...His work has appeared in National Wildlife, as well as The Washington Post, Mother Jones, New England Magazine, and the New Hampshire Times...

...Heard with increasing frequency in the returning wilderness and even suburban outskirts, it isn't the call of any dog or fox but the cry of a new, larger canine species, which scientists have named Canis latrans, var., the Eastern coyote...

...strangely, though, this most often occurs during the autumn hunting season, prompting biologists to conclude that the creature is feeding on carrion left in the woods by hunters...

...In the following 100 years, trappers, market hunters, and the first of the "big game sportsmen" succeeded in destroying most of the region's major wildlife populations...

...At any rate, deer mortality due to Eastern coyote predation isn't high...

...Explaining that his department had not recently received reports of sheep kills by Eastern coyotes, Wiley observed that "packs of domestic dogs pose a greater threat" to sheep than Eastern coyotes...

...Like all natural predators, the native coyotes eat "whatever prey species is most plentiful at the time," he explained...

...neither bounties nor scare tactics are needed...

...Perhaps the biggest distinction between an Eastern coyote and a coydog, though, is in the spirit...

...In such an unnatural situation — thousands of unguarded prey concentrated in remote areas on the open plain — it is little wonder that the western coyote has turned to sheep for food, just as the less-than-finicky eater might feast on a pen of untended jack rabbits, pack rats, or prairie chicken...

...An Eastern coyote that finds a deer in a clearing must catch it almost immediately, before it reaches the underbrush...

...Michael Harris is a New Hampshire homesteader and professional freelance writer...

...As far as controlling them goes, a fall slaughter won't be worth a tinker's dam anyway...

...By controlling rodents, one Federal study determined, a single coyote can save a rancher $114 in feed each year, or more than $ 1,000 over one coyote's lifetime...

...Thinking the coyote must have been rabid, the farmer grabbed a rifle and shot it...

...M.H...

...Official New Hampshire Fish and Game Department statistics for the 1978 deer kill, for example, list 6,942 deer shot by humans, and nine taken by their new, natural predator, the Eastern coyote...

...Eastern coyotes have a characteristic, wild look in their eyes that remains unbroken even after years of confinement in laboratory kennels...

...I don't want to encourage anybody to shoot one...

...They're way out on the range, far away from everything, and there are thousands in a single flock...

...It is fast ("the ability to outrun a rabbit...

...To remedy the devastating impact of human intervention on the wildlife ecology in this instance, however, nature has produced a fantastic solution in a mere instant of eternal time...

...Privately, Marshall admitted that "these aren't the animals we have in New England, and this isn't the situation we have here...

...His last article for The Progressive was about space pollution and satellite warfare...

...You've certainly got to admire something like that...

...Several years later, a team of Harvard University tax-onomists, using elaborate computer programs, verified her findings...

...With all of modern man's activities, and the resulting reduction of the number of species on Earth, out of nowhere a new animal appears and he's adaptable, and suddenly there's a frenzy...

...Now, a century after it was cleared, the land is once again covered by trees, and the timeless forces of nature have taken a dramatic step to assure population balance in the returning forest ecosystem...

...The animal was running erratically, jumping in the air, and snapping its jaws...

...While coyotes have grizzled, silver-to-black fur, a sharp muzzle, erect, pointed ears, large, rather wolf-like teeth, a long, bushy tail and a lush, thick winter coat, a coydog looks virtually identical to a common domestic dog...

...These findings have largely been lost on the Farm Bureau, however...

...The mystery began to be unraveled only in the late 1960s, when the unidentified animals were proliferating in the region and New Hampshire Fish and Game Department biologist Helenette Silver received a National Science Foundation grant to study and classify the animal...

...Weighing from thirty-five to sixty pounds, the Eastern coyote is well adapted to life in the modern New England woodlands and the cold northeastern climate...

...As a result, our newly found neighbor is becoming the target of a modern day witchhunt...

...This has resulted in the establishment of viable coyote populations numbering in the thousands today, in virtually all suitable habitat in the region...

...A farmer spied a young coyote acting strangely in the middle of a pasture behind his barn," he explained...

...It shows coyotes chasing and killing sheep," he explained, "and none of the scenes are staged...

...Jack rabbits, gophers, and other rodents often make serious inroads in livestock range, and the coyote is becoming better regarded for the value of the population control efforts it provides...