deer populations via fawn predation..........
2 major studies underway in Georgia, Alabama involving coyote research
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Berry College Associate Professor Chris Mowryand his
students on the sprawling campus started tracking coyotes
back in 2006.
students on the sprawling campus started tracking coyotes
back in 2006.
Now, Mowry and his research team are reaching into the Atlanta suburbs with the Atlanta Coyote Project to see how the beasts and humans live side by side in urban areas.
“What’s conflict to some people is enjoyable to others; conflict is a relative term,” Mowry said.
The teacher, who lives in Cobb County, has been speaking about the human vs. coyote situation to community groups for years, so he decided to take his research into the suburbs around Atlanta.
The instructor said the most common response for many is to call a trapper, which Mowry said does not actually address the situation.
“Removing/killing coyotes simply opens up territory for others to move in and occupy,” Mowry said. “When left alone, coyotes will control their own numbers based on available resources (primarily food). Controlling and limiting those resources is the best management strategy.”
Mowry created a Facebook page, Atlanta Coyote Project, and launched an online survey to help educate the public about the animals.
“We’ve had almost 2,000 people respond to our survey.” Mowry said. He is keenly interested in how coyotes are surviving in urban environments.
“What are they eating? What are their territory sizes like and what are their movement patterns like?” Mowry said.
In his first major study on the Berry campus and Rome area, Mowry collared nine animals and followed them for five or six years, as long as the batteries in the collars would last.
“We caught one male twice, once in 2006 and once in 2007 and I’m sure he was wondering what he did do to deserve this,” Mowry said.
One of the first animals caught in 2006 was a female. Mowry said they tracked her for a couple of years, and then lost contact. In December of 2013, he got a call about the shooting of a coyote off Smith Road. It was that same female he had caught near the Berry Equestrian center seven years earlier.
That indicted the range of the animal had been relatively small since the area where it was collared was less than two miles from where it had been shot, he added.
Mowry said another reason for his Atlanta Coyote Project is to develop data that is specific to the Southeast.
“What we know about coyotes across their historic range (west of the Mississippi) does not necessarily apply to our region,” Mowry said.
Mowry said he is interested in trying to analyze other differences between the southeastern animals and their western counterparts. The study will try to look at impacts related to climate patterns, food availability and reproduction.
Mowry is working with colleagues from Emory University, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and several Berry undergrads. “We expect this study to be ongoing, at least 5-plus years,” Mowry said.
A similar study is being headed by Mike Chamberlain, a professor of wildlife ecology and management at the University of Georgia. Its findings, including DNA samples from each animal, will be added to a growing coyote database at Princeton University.
Chamberlain’s survey focuses on animals taken by professional trappers in several counties near Augusta; on tracts across the Savannah River in South Carolina; and from the coastal plains south of Auburn, Alabama. At present, Chamberlain said, we don’t know much about Canis latrans.
“I get constant, constant, constant questions about coyotes from farmers and landowners,” said Chamberlain.
He readily admits he cannot answer all the queries, though part of his doctoral dissertation dealt with the creatures. One reason: Previous studies on coyote travel have focused on smaller tracts; this survey, which began in January, encompasses hundreds of square miles.
“If we’re going to understand this animal’s behavior, we’ll have to start studying it, on a larger scale,” he said.
The animals’ collars will beam their locations every four hours to a satellite, which will bounce that data back to an online server. Chamberlain can keep track of study subjects from a computer on the university campus. A Georgia coyote outfitted two weeks ago is now in South Carolina, Chamberlain noted.
The study has ecological ramifications. Biologists warn that coyotes in some areas are having a devastating effect on fawns — and that has implications for future generations of the whitetail deer. They also dig up and devour sea-turtle eggs, further imperiling species already endangered.
The survey, Chamberlain said, ought to show how coyotes use the landscape in their travels.
Coyotes came to the South from their native western ranges about 50 or 60 years ago, crossing the Mississippi in a relentless push for food. In Georgia and other states, they found a smorgasbord: open trash cans, pet food left outside, pets. Coyotes live in every state in North America; no one knows how many.
As they moved, some coyotes mated with wolves and dogs, said Bridgett vonHoldt, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton. She recently took over managing the New Jersey University’s coyote database, which has DNA samples from more than 1,000 animals.
The study is overdue, said Bradley Bergstrom, a biology professor at Valdosta State University. Bergstrom is a member of the science advisory board for Project Coyote, a nonprofit organization stressing a peaceful coexistence between humans and coyotes.
“I think there’s a growing thirst for knowledge about these animals,” Chamberlain said. “The bottom line is, we’re trying to figure out how they’re getting here.
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