MAINERS: Your Voice Needed!
WHAT: Maine Outdoors Radio Program will be hosting a "Conservationist" who will be talking about ways of addressing the "Coyote Problem" in Northern Maine.
WHERE: On radio station WVOM 101.3 and 103.9 FM (Bangor 103.9 FM and Augusta 101.3 FM)
WHEN: Sunday, April 18 at 7:00PM EST
WHAT YOU CAN DO: This radio station accepts calls from its listeners. PLEASE CALL on Sunday! Number to call: 1-800-966-1039
POINTS YOU CAN MAKE: Please use any of the points below from two OpEds printed in the Bangor Daily News and the Portland Press Herald by Project Coyote Founding Director, Camilla Fox, and Project Coyote Maine Representative, Geri Vistein
Culling Coyotes Not the Solution
From the Bangor Daily News
By Camilla H. Fox
Coyotes have become a convenient scapegoat for Maine's "deer problem." After all, it's much easier to point the finger at the big, bad coyote than question current forest management practices that adversely affect the size of the deer herd. Wholesale removal of forest cover by corporate landowners such as Plum Creek, combined with naturally occurring heavy snowstorms, leaves thousands of deer without food and shelter.
Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife biologists report that many deer have died of starvation. As scavengers, coyotes clean up the remains of road- and winter-killed deer, offering a natural ecological service that keeps the roadsides and woods clean. Unfortunately, coyotes' efficient, natural-born behavior gives extremists a chance to characterize coyotes as bloodthirsty deer killers.
Photo by Trish Carney
Bob Grandchamp, in his Op-Ed "Deer herds the victim of a foreign predator" (BDN, April 9), suggests that the state enact a coyote bounty to "clean out this killer … hellbent on exterminating and consuming our native population of deer." Mr. Grandchamp's emotional, human-centered view of wild animals and their relationship to each other and the natural environment is shortsighted and unscientific. Even the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services, the primary coyote-killing agency, admits that coyote bounties don't work and are counterproductive.
DIF&W doesn't offer a bounty but does allow coyotes to be shot, trapped, baited, and hounded year-round in unlimited numbers. Now the DIF&W-sponsored Deer Task Force is advocating for denning, the killing of coyote pups in their dens, and neck snaring, a method that DIF&W acknowledges is inherently indiscriminate that can cause extreme pain and suffering. Not only are such practices ethically repugnant, they don't work.
Under heavy pressure, coyotes will mate at an earlier age and have larger litters of healthier pups, who will be more likely to survive to breeding age. Beating down the coyote population over the long term would require killing 75 percent of the population every year. Two centuries of persistent persecution has done little to reduce coyote populations or conflicts and has likely selected for a more successful, opportunistic, resilient and adaptable species that some scientists refer to as the supercoyote.
As a top carnivore, coyotes play an undeniably vital role in their ecological communities. They competitively exclude or directly kill foxes, raccoons, skunks and feral cats — smaller predators that affect the number and diversity of ground-nesting birds. They also serve humans by eating rodents in huge numbers and even help keep Canada goose populations down in urban landscapes. Unlike humans, coyotes cull the sick, diseased and weak, thus strengthening the prey gene pool. Human hunters, on the other hand, desire the largest buck with the biggest rack, removing, if at all possible, the strongest and most robust individuals from the gene pool.
Killing coyotes in large numbers can set off ecological chain reactions with profound implications. Yet, even while research continues to highlight the important and complex role coyotes and other top carnivores play in maintaining ecological health and species diversity, many state agencies and extremist sportsmen's groups continue to promote a view of predators that is stuck in the big-bad-wolf era. In fact, coyotes immigrated into Maine as a direct result of the same anti-predator hysteria — coyotes have successfully filled the niche left open when the wolf was systematically eliminated.
Animals living in the wild operate under their own set of rules governed by the cycles of weather and food availability. Populations fluctuate; predators eat their prey. Unlike deer that, unless culled by predators, generally breed until they exhaust resources and starve, coyotes control their own numbers.
Wild animals shouldn't be cared for or protected during bad weather or short food years, like cattle and sheep. Imposing human values and emotions on wild animals leads to irrational and misdirected policies. Coyotes are not bad, and deer are not good. They are what they are, and they play important roles in each others' lives.
We must move beyond the mind-set that views coyotes as evil or unnatural, as Mr. Grandchamp proposes, and recognize that they have much to offer us, not only by keeping ecosystems healthy, but by providing inspiring examples of ingenuity and adaptability in an ever-changing world.
Camilla H. Fox grew up in Maine, holds a master's degree in wildlife ecology, policy and conservation, and is the co-author of "Coyotes in Our Midst: Learning to Live with an Adaptable & Resilient Carnivore."
March 12
Portland Press Herald
It's time to start respecting coyotes
By Geri Vistein, Project Coyote
— This commentary is in response to an article written by Bob Humphrey in the Press Herald on Dec. 4: ''Maybe it's time to turn sights on coyotes.''
As a wildlife researcher here in Maine, the focus of my work is carnivores and their relationship to the larger ecosystem of which we are a part.
In my research and outreach projects, I have spoken with many hunters, and I recognize their concern for the acceptance of their sport by the larger community. Likewise, members of the larger community in Maine have shared their interests and concerns regarding our wildlife with me.
Thus I was in disbelief when I first read this article about killing coyotes under the guise of ''hunting.'' Many people in the community can understand respectfully killing an animal for its meat, but that understanding ends when the killing is done for ''fun'' or for some unfounded control tactic.
RISKING PUBLIC SUPPORT
Mr. Humphrey stated: ''Predator hunting can be a lot of fun.'' If hunters want to project themselves as true sportsmen, killing a valuable carnivore for ''fun'' will without a doubt decrease public support of hunting in general.
I would encourage hunters to read the life of Aldo Leopold, the father of wildlife biology. Leopold was an avid hunter, and in his younger days as a forester, he saw no value in our native carnivores.
But with the disruption of ecosystems that resulted from federally supported predator control, he came to understand the value of carnivores. He became a voice not only for the preservation of game animals, but also for predators.
He once stated in his Sand County Almanac, ''Harmony with the land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand, and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators. The land is one organism.''
Mr. Humphrey initiates his article with the statement that the 2008 deer hunting season was the ''worst deer season in recent memory.'' Using this comment, he proceeds on through his logic for killing coyotes.
He states that coyotes are ''public enemy No. 1 on a deer hunter's list.'' From what scientific source is this attitude based? Or is it based on science at all?
Coyotes are a valuable native carnivore, and carnivores kill other animals in order to survive, and in doing so participate in the great design of nature. Mr. Humphrey's simplistic view of the relationship between predator and prey in no way portrays the vital, complex relationship between coyotes and deer.
Bears also are known to be effective predators of deer. But Mr. Humphrey makes no mention of bear hunting. Why?
As a scientist, I understand how information about the natural world can be manipulated and taken out of context to fit the writer's own belief system or agenda. I find it interesting that Mr. Humphrey makes no mention of the dramatic effect that the forest practices in Maine have on our deer herds, especially those in the north and Down East.
It is well known by hunters that the destruction of deer yards is a serious concern for the protection and survival of deer in winter.
In fact, Gerald Lavigne, in a 1995 study of eastern coyotes and their impact on white-tailed deer in Maine, said this about the deer in northern Maine: ''Major improvements in sustainable deer populations will only occur when, and if, the quantity and quality of wintering habitat increases.''
BE CAREFUL ABOUT RESEARCH
Be careful when research is cited out of context as an excuse to kill our native carnivore:''Results of a 1995 study claimed that coyotes account for up to 30 percent deer mortality here.'' What study? What part of Maine is ''here''? It makes a difference.
How many of these deer would have died from other causes anyway? People do their fellow hunters a great diservice by manipulating information that they count on to be true.
In addition, blithely stating that killing one or two coyotes will help alleviate winter and spring predation is absolutely unfounded by scientific research (for more information, please visit www.projectcoyote.org).
In closing, I would encourage hunters to collaborate with landowners large and small in order to create the necessary habitat for the survival of Maine's deer herds. This will be effort well spent.
But killing coyotes ''for fun'' will accomplish nothing for deer in Maine.
http://www.pressherald.com/archive/its-time-to-start-respecting-coyotes_2009-01-23.html
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Project Coyote is a non-profit fiscally sponsored project of Earth Island Institute that promotes educated coexistence between people and coyotes and advocates on behalf of coyotes and other native carnivores. We depend on our members and supporters to help us continue our work on behalf of America's native "song dog." Please join us today! All donations are tax-deductible. Visit us at www.ProjectCoyote.org.
________________________
Project Coyote
P.O. Box 5007
Larkspur, CA 94977
info@projectcoyote.org
415.945.3232 (o)
Fostering educated coexistence between humans and coyotes
A project of Earth Island Institute
Visit us online: www.ProjectCoyote.org
make a tax deductible donation:
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