"The howl of the coyote is America’s “original national anthem,” says Dan Flores, author of Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History"............ "A totemic animal in Native American mythology, the coyote has lived in North America for more than a million years"................ "But since the early 19th-century, when Lewis and Clark first encountered them, coyotes have been subject to a pitiless war of extermination by ranchers, farmers and federal/state/local government agencies alike".............."Some 500,000 coyotes are killed each year, many shot to death from small planes and helicopters"................ "Yet the coyote has survived all attempts to eradicate it, spreading from its original midwest prairie territory to virtually all points north/south east and west in North America"................"The coyote evolved with an adaptive, evolutionary derived strategy for surviving under persecution"...................... "Coyotes evolved alongside larger canids, like wolves, which often persecuted and harassed them and killed their pups"...................... "As a result, both jackals and coyotes developed this fission-fusion adaptation, which human beings also have"......................... "This enables them to either function as pack predators or as singles and pairs"....................... "When they’re persecuted, they tend to abandon the pack strategy and scatter across the landscape in singles and pairs"...................... "And the poison campaign was one of the things that kept scattering them across North America"..................... "One of the other adaptations they have is that, whenever their populations are pressured, their litter sizes go up".................... "The normal size is five to six pups"........................ "When their populations are suppressed, their litters get up as high as 12 to 16 pups"........................... "You can reduce the numbers of coyotes in a given area by 70 percent but the next summer their population will be back to the original number"....................... "They use their howls and yipping to create a kind of census of coyote populations".............. "If their howls are not answered by other packs, it triggers an autogenic response that produces large litters"

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=http://www.newsweek.com/why-are-we-waging-war-coyotes-572864&ct=ga&cd=CAEYASoUMTQ2MTk4ODE1MjU2NDU2MDczNDQyGmY1MDlhNmI0NGUzZGM2ODk6Y29tOmVuOlVT&usg=AFQjCNGZnhY88JUVnJphXOiWoaMqNocpXg

WHY ARE WE WAGING WAR ON COYOTES?

BY JAMES CROMWELL ON 3/25/17

How did coyotes become public enemy No. 1? These resilient, intelligent survivors should garner our respect and admiration, but instead they're targeted and killed in hideous ways.

Coyotes are a fundamental part of our urban environment—they're our neighbors, really—and, like sparrows and raccoons, can be found everywhere in North America, including trying to survive, despite the odds, in metropolitan areas like Los Angeles and New York City.

Griffith Park in Burbank, Calif. is the nations

largest urban Park and home to many Coyotes

(pregnant female below)

According to author Dan Flores, who wrote the excellent Coyote America: A Natural & Supernatural History, coyotes are now the most common large wildlife species most Americans will ever see. You're far more likely to spot a coyote than our national bird, the bald eagle, which is now rare because of our murderous ways and whose decimation should serve as a cautionary tale for our treatment of coyotes.

The war on coyotes is a terrible thing. There is no end to the ways humans have found to exterminate these beautiful canines, including by trapping them in wire snares, shooting them and poisoning them with strychnine (along with any other unfortunate "non-target" animal who happens to take the bait).

In Southern California alone, the cities of Carson, Glendora, Rolling Hills, Seal Beach and Torrance are targeting coyotes—even though the state's own wildlife department has found that trapping is an ineffective long-term solution to controlling their population.

Recently, residents of Arcadia, California, expressed concerns about the cruelty of using neck and leg snares to trap and then kill coyotes, but officials ignored them. PETA has filed a lawsuit to stop this plan.

Every year since 2001, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has killed approximately 35,000 coyotes  by shooting them from planes and helicopters. Sheep and goats have been fitted with collars containing the gut-wrenching poison 1080 so that when coyotes attack, they'll bite into the collar and die.

It is outrageous knowing that even today, there are still "no limit" coyote-killing contests with prizes for the most tails turned in. And if you travel down a backroad in rural Oklahoma or Texas, don't be surprised if you see dead coyotes hanging from fences.

Coyotes are smart enough to recognize their enemy: They typically flee

Even though coyotes provide natural rodent control (their food of choice is rodents), whose fault is it really when they venture down the hillsides in search of easy pickin's? People who let their cats roam outdoors, where innumerable dangers can easily befall them, or who leave food out for feral cat colonies, are sending coyotes an engraved invitation. Why should they be killed simply for trying to live to see another day?

Our wild neighbors have far more to fear from us than we do from them. It's time to recognize animals' rightful place in the world and learn to coexist in peace.

--------------------------------------

https://www.google.com/amp/relay.nationalgeographic.com/proxy/distribution/public/amp/2016/08/coyote-america-dan-flores-history-science

How the Most Hated Animal in 

America Outwitted Us All

Coyotes, the

 victims of attempted 

extermination,

 have found a 

way to thrive.

Coyotes are monogamous and mate for
 life; communicate
with family members constantly

Tens of thousands of Coyotes killed annually and
rebound with larger litters to increase their
 population
to greater levels than before persecution--
we humans
are stupid to continue this genocide

Like all animals that are opportunistic, Coyotes
will exploit our sloppy garbage disposal habits
 and
begin to become less wary of us, associating
 humans
with food............Ultimately, a human fed coyote
 ends up
dead at our hands because of our sloppy ways
 because
of getting into trouble with us