https://www.peer.org/news/news-releases/coyote-control-based-on-scientific-house-of-cards.html
Ph: (202) 265-PEER (7337) • Fax: (202) 265-4192
All content © 2017 Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
962 Wayne Ave, Suite 610, Silver Spring, MD 20910
A famous scientist tells USDA
Ph: (202) 265-PEER (7337) • Fax: (202) 265-4192
All content © 2017 Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
962 Wayne Ave, Suite 610, Silver Spring, MD 20910
For Immediate Release: Dec 20, 2017
Contact: Kirsten Stade (202) 265-7337
Contact: Kirsten Stade (202) 265-7337
COYOTE CONTROL BASED ON SCIENTIFIC HOUSE OF CARDS
Complaint Seeks to End Federal Reliance on Flawed 42-Year-Old Study
Posted on Dec 20, 2017
Washington, DC — Federal strategy and funding for coyote control efforts are all rooted in one inaccurate, speculative, and outmoded 1975 study, according to a complaint filed today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a coalition of groups, and top scientists in the field. They are demanding that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) cease relying on this study, stop distributing it to state agencies, and issue a public notice announcing these actions.
coyote killing contests do not eliminate coyotes
coyote killing contests do not eliminate coyotes
Lethal removal of coyotes is America’s predominant means of control, with USDA’s Wildlife Services reporting that it had eradicated 76,859 coyotes in 2016 alone. For more than 40 years, the main scientific support offered to justify coyote eradication is a 1975 USDA-funded study.
Should this complaint succeed it may result in a significant reduction in the number and scope of coyote extermination efforts across the U.S. and could induce government agencies to employ recent peer-reviewed research in formulating canid control policies.
“This hoary study has been inappropriately Xeroxed forward for decades,” stated PEER Counsel Adam Carlesco, citing recurrent use of the study just a few months ago. “In addition to all of its other flaws, the study recommends against precisely what it is used to support – large-scale coyote exterminations.”
Under requirements of the Information Quality Act, federal scientific work must be of the highest integrity, objectivity, and completeness. By filing a complaint under that statute, the groups are pressing USDA to stop using this study or distributing it, as it has done to many state game agencies. The complaint points out that –
- The 1975 study was never peer-reviewed, as USDA guidelines require, and was based on data the authors concede were “largely speculative” admitting that “[i]n most areas we simply do not know how the control kill relates to the size of the population, or even whether coyote numbers are increasing or decreasing”;
- USDA continues to ignore a growing body of scientific literature on the effectiveness of non-lethal means of preventing coyote predation on domestic livestock and the biological necessity of carnivore populations in stabilizing regional ecosystems.
“By continuing to peddle this inappropriate research, USDA is engaged in a deliberate and indefensible fraud,” added Carlesco, noting that the 1975 study on western coyotes is also being used to justify elimination of different populations of canids, such as the eastern coyote, or “coywolf” – a hybridized subspecies with only roughly 60% shared genetics with western coyotes. “This study endures only because it serves to justify Wildlife Services’ default approach – killing without further consideration.”
Under its Information Quality Act guidelines, USDA is supposed to make a decision on this complaint within 60 days. If it rejects the complaint, the groups may appeal, thereby triggering a requirement that USDA create a panel of experts to make a final decision.
Seventeen organizations have joined this complaint, including Project Coyote, Predator Defense, The Center for Biological Diversity, the Humane Society of the U.S., The Animal Legal Defense Fund, International Fund for Animal Welfare, The National Wolfwatcher Coalition and the Western Watersheds Project. A number of wildlife specialists, including Dr. Jane Goodall and numerous scientists who are among the North America’s top canid researchers, have also signed the complaint.
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A famous scientist tells USDA
Wildlife Services their age old coyote killing program actually increases number of coyotes and depredations-
USDA Wildlife Services and its prior incarnations such as Animal Damage Control and Predator and Rodent Control has been indiscriminately killing coyotes for as long as the agency existed. This practice has often irritated a diffuse collection of conservationists, scientists, and the general public. However, politically better placed livestock interests have been able to keep the program going year after year.
Overall, it seems Wildlife Service’s hundred years of efforts in killing coyotes has not been effective. In fact, it seems to the contrary. Coyotes have gone to being a medium sized predator in the Western United States to occupying all of North America.
Indiscriminate killing, as opposed to targeted control, refers to killing as many coyotes as possible in an area, given the resources available. Targeted control is the effort to kill or otherwise deter specific coyotes that are preying on livestock (usually sheep).
In a letter to Wildlife Services, Dr. Robert Crabtree, founder, chief scientist and president of the Yellowstone Ecological Research Center, http://www.yellowstoneresearch.org answers the question “What effect does reduction of coyotes (older than 6 months) have on the remaining population?” He wrote the scientific opinion letter because of a request from Brooks Fahy, Executive Director of Predator Defense.
Dr. Crabtree wrote “Prior to widespread human persecution starting in the mid-nineteenth century, wolves have provided a constant selection factor inflicting mortality, competition, and numerous other sub-lethal effects.” He then said this tremendous pressure on coyotes from wolves resulted in the evolution of a species that is in a nearly constant state of colonization to make up for mortality and displacement by wolves. When the wolves were eliminated, the coyote’s drive to colonize did not end.
Human attempts to reduce or eliminate coyotes were actually relative mild compared to the previous presence of wolves. Coyote populations often expanded to “near saturation” of the available habitat. Whenever coyotes were killed indiscriminately in large numbers in an area, there was immediate immigration. Also, while “unexploited” coyote populations had low pup survival rates, with human caused mortality (“exploited populations”) coupled with no wolves, coyote pup survival increased greatly due to a prey surplus. As the unusual number of surviving pups grew, there was pressure for hunting coyotes to overcome caution and attack more concentrated sources of calories, i.e., sheep and deer, rather than voles, rabbits, insects, etc.
Crabtree said that in order for humans to reduce coyote populations, there needed to be 70% or greater coyote mortality. This was not just for a year, but all of the time. Significant indiscriminate reductions of coyotes triggers a switchover of the coyote population back to one of constant colonization.
Crabtree concluded, “Coyotes are still products of their evolutionary past. Biological, economical, and ecological evaluation of control practices should be a requirement undertaken before any public or private effort to reduce losses due to coyotes or any other predator. In conclusion, it is my opinion based on decades of field research that the common practice of reducing adult coyote populations on western rangelands is most likely ineffective and likely causes an increase the number of lambs, fawns, and calves killed by coyotes.”
Click below link to read Dr. Crabtree’s full letter.
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