Coyotes are clever, adaptable animals that once roamed the western two-thirds of North America. A determined federal government extermination campaign in the 1940s and '50s led to the killing of more than 6 million of them. But in recent decades, coyotes have made a comeback, expanding beyond their historic range. They've even taken up residence in Chicago, which hosts upward of 2,000.
Many people, however, still regard them with suspicion and contempt. Mark Twain contributed to this view by describing the coyote as a "slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton" with a "furtive and evil eye" and "a general slinking expression all over." The belief that the only good coyote is a dead coyote persists among some people in some places.
Illinois is one of them, playing host to hunting contests whose goal is to kill as many coyotes as possible in a given period — say, 24 hours. At one "predator challenge" in southern Illinois in 2015, participants bagged 36 of their quarry.
This year's competition, however, also drew a dozen protesters led by the Humane Society of Illinois. It regards the pastime as barbaric — the moral equivalent of dogfighting. "Shooting live animals for fun or for target practice is animal cruelty," director Marc Ayers told us. California banned such contests in 2014, and the Humane Society would like other states to do likewise.
Good idea. Unlike deer and ducks, coyotes aren't hunted for their meat. And there's no good excuse for wantonly slaughtering them. Coyotes play a key role in the environment, eating rodents and scavenging carrion. They occasionally prey on small livestock, which is an argument only for allowing the shooting of specific problem animals.
Anyway, the toll in Illinois is modest: Fewer than 10 percent of the sheep and lambs that die each year are killed by coyotes. Experts stress that preventive measures, from fencing to guard dogs, are the most effective remedy.
Defenders of these hunts argue that without such population control methods, coyotes would proliferate to intolerable numbers. But the Humane Society cites scientific evidence that culling stimulates reproduction and predation on livestock. The University of Illinois Extension agrees that "coyote population reduction (removing some or all of the coyotes in an area) is usually unrealistic and always temporary." Wildlife scientist Robert Crabtree, head of the Yellowstone Ecological Research Center, says, "It cannot be over-emphasized how powerfully coyote populations compensate for population reductions."
Trying to protect farm animals — or pets — by indiscriminately killing these predators is a losing strategy. A better approach is to remove food sources that might attract coyotes, while taking measures to protect the animals they might attack.
In recent years, people in this state and the rest of the country have come to appreciate the presence of native creatures that were once regarded as enemies. That holds for bobcats, wolves, bears and even rattlesnakes — one type of which has been granted federal protection in Illinois in an attempt to prevent it from disappearing.
It also applies to coyotes, who have persisted on this continent for more than a million years. They have even learned to adapt to modern humans. Modern humans ought to return the favor.
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