Killing Coyotes Doesn't Work

Marc Bekoff, Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, is a columnist for Change.org.

Earlier this week, Annie Hartnett wrote about peacefully co-existing with coyotes, something with which I have professional experience by working with Project Coyote, and because of my extensive research on these amazing carnivores.

Coyotes have defied virtually all attempts to control their cunning ways. Native peoples portrayed coyotes as a sly tricksters, thieves, gluttons, outlaws, and spoilers, because of their uncanny ability to survive and reproduce successfully in a wide variety of habitats, including major metropolitan areas such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City, and under harsh conditions.

Coyotes have also survived their encounters with humans who have tried to control them using incredibly brutal methods, and who hold well-organized community hunts in which the person who kills the most coyotes wins a prize. Often these mass killings are considered to be wholesome family outings, quality family time. What a perverted sense of family values.

In the United States, Wildlife Services (formerly called Animal Damage Control) ruthlessly slaughters around 90,000 coyotes each year as part of federally subsidized lethal predator control. More than $1.6 billion has been spent on coyote management over the past 60 years. Wanton killing doesn't work because little or no attention is paid to the versatile behavior of these adaptable predators.

Only rarely is "the problem" coyote caught or killed, and when coyotes are killed, others take their place. There's evidence that in areas where coyotes are killed, birth rates and litter size increase, the result of which is the maintenance or increase in coyote numbers. Killing does not and never has worked.

Coyotes are considered the enemy of ranchers, but disease and unsanitary conditions frequently cause more livestock deaths than do coyotes or other predators. Concerning predation on sheep, biologist Kim Murray Berger discovered the biggest culprit by far to explain the missing sheep is the high price of hay. Wages and lamb prices are important players, too. Even the rancher’s age has more to do with his predicament than do predators. At the statistical bottom of Berger’s list of prime suspects sits the coyote.

It is ethically indefensible to wantonly go out and kill coyotes because they try to live among us, arrogant big-brained invasive mammals who have redecorated the homes of coyotes and other animals, and then conveniently decide that they have become "pests" when we don't want them around any longer. Confrontations with coyotes can almost always be traced to irresponsible human actions including allowing dogs to run free off leash and feeding the coyotes, either intentionally or unintentionally. And, it's pretty easy to clean up all of these problems and co-exist peacefully with coyotes.

Coyotes are adaptable, intelligent, socially complex, and sentient beings who deserve respect. An extraordinary amount of time, energy, and money has gone into coyote control. Nonetheless, it hasn't worked, lest coyotes would be controlled and the controllers could move on to other programs, hopefully less pernicious and more successful and economically worthwhile activities. I expect that if any of us were as unsuccessful and wasteful in our jobs as Wildlife Services and animal "controllers" have been in theirs we'd be looking elsewhere for employment.

Let's appreciate coyotes for the amazing beings they are. They offer valuable lessons in survival and we must expand our "compassion footprint" and incorporate them into our lives, not wantonly blast them away. Though coyotes try our patience, they're a model animal for learning about adaptability and success by nonhuman individuals striving to make it in a human dominated world. They're a success story, hapless victims of their own success.

Coyotes — love them and leave them be.

To learn more about the amazing lives of coyotes and how we can easily coexist with them, visit the website of Project Coyote, a national non-profit organization that is dedicated to fostering co-existence  between humans and coyotes, and advocating on behalf of America's wild "song dog."

Photo credit: Christopher Bruno