Coyotes: Intrepid Survivors Triumph Over Human Predation

My dogs respond in different ways to the coyotes who often appear near our house. Sometimes they'll be feeling playful, and they'll all run around together. On other occasions they're more wary and there'll be a lot of barking, with everyone keeping his distance. In summer, we've encountered a mother coyote pacing back and forth and barking at us, anxious to protect her den of cubs. But whenever coyotes perform their group bark/howl/yap ritual at night, my dogs always respond with wild barking of their own. Which is only natural. They're all members of the dog family, and they clearly feel a kinship with each other. Coyotes and dogs have been known to mate. Their offspring are called coy dogs.

Coyotes, or canis latrans (barking dog) are survivors, despite relentless human predation, mostly because they're highly adaptable and smart. In fact, they positively flourished after wolves were nearly exterminated in the 1800s. In the United States, they can be found in the East as well as the West.

The coyote is omnivorous. He consumes deer, bighorn sheep, rodents, jackrabbits, domestic cats, insects, various plants, and in the case of the suburban coyote, dog food and dumpster food. The diet of the desert coyotes in my area is 40% vegetal, with the remainder carrion, jackrabbits, insects, and whatever else is available. I often come upon coyote scat, easily distinguished from domestic dog feces because of the seeds and other plant material mixed in. Contrary to rancher myth, coyotes may actually benefit livestock by consuming large numbers of jackrabbits, the cow's major competitors for forage. In the Southwest, they raid farms and gardens, eating melons, raspberries, grapes, and chiles (they're smart enough to consume only the flesh, not the seeds).

Desert coyotes weigh half as much as other coyotes (20 lbs as opposed to 40 lbs) and have paler, shorter, thinner fur, which makes them better able to dissipate excess heat and blend into the landscape. They can run up to 40 miles an hour, their bushy tails characteristically drooping, and are capable of traveling several hundred miles in a single night.

Coyotes mate for life and establish family territories. Their homes are dens dug into slopes. The four to eight pups born every spring sometimes remain with their parents for more than a year, then travel far away to establish their own territories.

Where ranching interests dominate politics-as in my state, New Mexico-millions of dollars of taxpayer money are spent each year indiscriminately gunning down thousands of coyotes, usually from helicopters. Most of the carnage takes place in late winter or early spring, when local ranchers feel the need to clear the land of the so-called "varmints" before calving season. In fact, the domesticated cattle that ranchers raise do far greater damage to the environment than coyotes could ever do to cattle because of their degradation of the land through grazing, and the many tons of cow waste that end up in our water supply.

The chief enemies of coyotes are humans, who shoot, trap, and poison them, and even set fire to their dens in the misguided belief that coyotes are nothing but pests. No hunting permit is needed to kill a coyote. Sadly, we once discovered a fatally injured coyote who had been shot in our arroyo.

In some western states, body count contests attempt to further decimate the coyote population. For example, the town of Reserve, New Mexico actually sponsors an annual coyote-killing spree, with prizes given for the most coyotes shot in one day. There is no limit to the number of coyotes destroyed in this "sporting" event. Other states, such as Colorado and Arizona, allow restricted body count contests. The irony is that even hunting advocacy groups such as the Colorado Wildlife Foundation oppose these irresponsible slaughters of what is, after all, native wildlife with an important role to play in the food chain.

Animal rights opponents argue that environmentalists and animal advocates are unrealistic wackos who want to return to some nonexistent Eden where nature is always gentle and beautiful. In fact, we're very aware that nature is often quite brutal, and so are all of its creatures-including coyotes as well as humans. What we as activists are aiming for is a more balanced nature, rather than one in which humans give themselves permission to systematically and with impunity destroy other species and take over more and more of their habitats. But in the case of coyotes, I believe that ultimately they will survive-they're too clever for us, and they've been around a lot longer. Native American myth portrays the coyote as a wily trickster and a blend of innocence, intelligence, greed, and great charm. It's a pretty accurate representation.