While I no longer live in the Northeast, my favorite natural history magazine is the quarterly NORTHERN WOODLANDS...............Published out of Vermont, this excellent publication is chock full of information on wildlife and perpetuating the biodiversity of New England and NY State............Editor Dave Mance posted a interesting commentary on whether Eastern Coyotes(or for that matter Western Coyotes) have been displacing both Red and Gray Foxes when they are all sympatric in a given system..........I provided Dave with some peer reviewed insights(as did other readers) on this subject suggesting that Coyotes while not historically an east coast animal, are very much native and not an invasive species as they have naturally expanded and colonized the whole of the USA due to us eliminating Wolves and Pumas and altering the landscape with our farms, suburban neighborhoods and the like.................Most of the literature suggests that because Gray Foxes climb trees and inhabit deep woodlands, they are better able to avoid Coyote predation...................Red Foxes are more a field and woods edge species like Coyotes so dispersing Red Foxes can get run down by Coyotes and as a result, many Red Foxes are living on the fringes of core Coyotes habitat as well as denning in closer to human habitation where Coyotes might or might not be as welcome by their human neighbors..............Just as the Coyotes out West that coexist with Wolves do so by living on the margins between Wolf Packs, so will the Red Foxes adapt and make their livings accordingly around Coyotes

Trying to Throw my Mind Around a Story | Northern Woodlands Magazine

Trying to Throw my Mind Around a Story

by Dave Mance III | January 10th 2014 | ShareThis

one of Red fox. Photo by Gary Lehman.

One of the ways we try to differentiate ourselves from the traditional environmental media is by looking at things evenly. For example, a press release showed up in my inbox the other day with a headline that screamed: Cold Snap Will Be A Killer For Birds, Group Warns. We didn’t sound the alarm, figuring that with all the legitimately sad environmental problems out there jostling for attention, people need to get worked up over natural processes like fish need bicycles. I’d rather run a story about how birds have evolved to cope with cold weather, seeing as this isn’t the world’s first cold snap and will certainly not be its last.

But it’s easy to be crotchety and run your red pen through a story idea; it’s harder to come up with a good story angle yourself. Consider fox and coyote interactions. I’ve been doing just that for years, because it seems like where I live, foxes, specifically reds, are in a protracted funk. Growing up, I’d see foxes clamoring up manure piles, chasing each other during mating season, feeding with their puppies on wild strawberries that were growing outside their den. And I never remember seeing coyotes. Now it’s the exact opposite. I do still see some fox sign, but it’s probably 10 to 1 coyote to fox. The old fox dens sit empty, for the most part.

And like you, I’m sure, I talk to people about this sort of thing. I’ve talked to people in Maine and New York and all around the eastern half of America. And many of them say that they’ve been noticing the same thing on land they’re intimately familiar with.

So are coyotes, a non-native animal that only arrived in the northeast 50 or so years ago, displacing red foxes? This seems like a good question and a good hook for a story. The problem is I just don’t know how to tell it.

Red Foxes are taking up residence closer to humans to avoid Coyotes

I started my research into the matter by asking naturalists what they were seeing, and some of them confirmed that they’ve seen coyote-killed-foxes. Some foxes partially eaten, some just left for dead. I scanned the scientific literature and found corroboration in one research project done in Canada. One naturalist said that she suspects that where the two animals coexist, they may be using the same habitats at different times. Others have shared the observation that foxes are being pushed into towns and residential areas; that the coyotes run the woods now and the foxes are fleeing to the suburbs, choosing humans as the lesser of two evils. My sister-in-law had a litter of fox pups born under her back porch at work a few years back, which certainly seems to lend credence to this hypothesis.

I talked to fur trappers next, figuring these were the men and women on the front lines who’d know better than anybody. There is universal consensus among everyone I spoke to that there are more coyotes today and fewer foxes, and that to a certain degree there has to be a cause and effect, even if it’s just competition for resources. This contention is backed up by harvest data. But most went on to say that the question probably obscures the big picture. And that, really, it’s changes to the landscape and farming practices that are having the most profound effect on foxes.

A trapper based in western New York that I corresponded with online, shared this observation:

“Decades past, when crop fields were harvested for the season, they were either left alone or fall plowed and then disked in the spring. Fallow ground was left for grass and weeds, hedgerows and weedy fencelines were everywhere, and water tables were higher, resulting in more wetlands year-round. Now we have common farming practices to bushhog corn stubble and disc under corn, beans, and other row crops in the fall. That results in untold 1,000s of acres that are now just frozen-dirt deserts, which before would hold small rodent and bird populations all winter. Hedgerows and fence lines are gone, period. Everything is now one enormous field, with edges plowed to the max tight against roads, creeks, ditches, with nil margin between. Wetland areas have been tiled and drained with reckless abandon. The carrying capacity of land for wildlife is measured by the worst possible time in the food-source cycle. Look around you out there in farmlands other than working dairy operations...it is one big, dirt desert wasteland right now. Where literally tons of biomass (small rodents & birds) used to exist, few do now. Take away that much fox food, you take away the ability of the land to support the fox.”

EMERGING FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH THE DECLINE OF A GRAY FOX

POPULATION AND MULTI-SCALE LAND COVER ASSOCIATIONS OF

MESOPREDATORS IN THE CHICAGO METROPOLITAN AREA

 A Thesis

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Master of Science in the

Graduate School of the Ohio State University

By

Alison N. Willingham, B.S.

*****

The Ohio State University

2008

Intraguild Competition with Coyotes

Coyote populations throughout North America are expanding, perhaps originally

due to the extirpation of wolves (Smith et al. 2003) and most recently due to increases in

agricultural land use (Patterson and Messier 2001). Agricultural fields may support

greater densities of prey species such as deer, rabbits and mice, as well as provide

abundant seasonal food in the form of crops.

Patterson and Messier (2001) found a

positive correlation between coyote and prey abundance, suggesting that these areas may

serve as high quality habitat for this behaviorally plastic carniserve as high quality habitat for this behaviorally plastic carnivore. In Illinois,

approximately 81% of the land is used for agricultural practices with 50% of that

consisting of row crops (Rosenblatt et al. 1999). This shift in land use may be providing

an abundant food source supporting increasing coyote populations. Most recently,

coyotes have moved into urban areas (Gompper 2002), likely in response to the diversity

and abundance of prey items and anthropogenic resources (Fedriani et al. 2001, Morey et

al. 2007).

A gradient of intraguild competition has been reported between coyotes and gray

foxes, as well as between coyotes and other species of fox. Some studies suggest that

gray foxes may be well equipped to coexist with coyotes, primarily due to their

omnivorous food habits, evasive tree-climbing behavior and seclusive nature (Sheldon

1949, Cypher 1993). Chamberlain and Leopold (2005) found that coyotes did not limit

the distribution of gray foxes, as several were found living entirely within coyote home

ranges; although foxes did avoid the core use areas of these territories. Gray foxes in

California were found to use space in a way that was more influenced by resource

distribution than by coyote distribution (Neale and Sacks 2001).

Other studies have documented negative relationships between coyotes and foxes

(Sargeant et al. 1987, Crooks and Soule 1999, Fedriani et al. 2000). In one study, 92% of

all gray fox mortalities were attributed to larger predators, with 67% of those mortalities

caused by coyotes (Farias et al. 2005). A kit fox (Vulpes macrotis) study determined that

coyote predation accounted for 75.8 ± 7.7% of mortality (Cypher and Spencer 1998)