New York's Adirondack State Park is the largest park, largest National Historic Landmark and largest state-level protected area in the contiguous United States .................A true natural jewel, The Park covers some 6.1 million acres (2.5×106 ha), a land area roughly the size of Vermont and greater than the National Parks of Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Glacier, and Great Smoky Mountains combined........... Once a hunting ground for numerous Native American tribes, the land that makes up the Park was surrendered to the U.S. Government as a result of the American Revolution in 1783.................. The events leading up to the creation of the Park were a coordinated effort by both private and public interests..............Considered, "the most advanced experiment in conservation in the United States", the Adirondack Park was created in 1892 in order to protect vital natural resources, most notably freshwater and timber..............As in all of the eastern USA, The Adirondacks once harbored Wolves, Pumas, Lynx, Bobcats, Black Bears, Elk, Wood Bison, Moose, Caribou and a score of mesocarnivores including Fishers and Pine Martens..............A tremendous rewilding and economic opportunity exists in the Adirondacks if we can marshall people to action..............An informative read below on this potential

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2014

The Economic Potential of Rewilding the Adirondacks

by Steve Hall

Adirondack almanac.com

Tourism is a key business in the Adirondacks. About 12.4 % of local employment is tourism related, but only $2 out of every hundred spent on tourism in New York State ends up in the Adirondacks.

It’s often argued that Adirondack towns and villages, particularly those outside the High Peaks, Lake George and Old Forge areas, present a challenging environment in which to make a living.

Some folks say we should attract manufacturing, others see building more resorts or recreation facilities as the answer, but what about tapping into one of our most important natural resources: wildlife?

Wildlife as a Tourism Driver

Wildlife helps drive tourist revenue, and can help create hospitality and infrastructure support jobs.  Take for example the experience of Yellowstone where wolves were reintroduced in the mid-1990s, not only to rewild Yellowstone, but also to try and better manage the exploding elk herds, and the ecosystem damage they were causing.

The result was an interesting economic development: in data gathered through surveys between 2004 and 2006, it turned out that a high percentage of Yellowstone visitors cited the possibility of seeing wolves as a major factor in visiting.

This translated into an estimated $35 million in extra annual dollars spent in the local economies of Gardiner, West Yellowstone, Silver Gate, Cooke City, and the other Montana and Wyoming towns which border Yellowstone. About 3.5% of Yellowstone visitors claimed they had come only to see wolves, and would have gone elsewhere (Banff, Denali, Algonquin, etc.) if there were no chance of seeing the iconic predator.

Here in the Adirondacks, the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism (ROOST) promotes tourism to the traveling public and releases annual reports based on surveys of tourists who interact with the visitors’ center through walk-ins, call-ins, reach out and social media.

Hiking is the most popular reported outdoor activity, followed by canoeing and kayaking, skiing and snowboarding, and the ever more popular cycling. Curiously, the only mention of wildlife viewing in the survey are the Adirondack Wildlife Refuge’s “Wolf Walk”, where visitors learn about wolves.

What if ROOST could actively promote wildlife viewing?  In the future it could be possible to see elk, wolves, or cougar, if such species were rewilded to the Adirondacks.  Seeing such animals would be a remote possibility while hiking (wolves and cougar tend to flee), but a better possibility while canoeing (all mammals come to drink), and a still stronger possibility while simply driving (most wildlife sightings are of animals crossing roads).

What if this emphasis on wildlife tourism resulted in only a 10% increase in tourism? That would be over $16 million dollars, not including the tourists who are already more actively engaged with wildlife each year such as birders, hunters, and anglers.

In addition to the economic advantages of restoring wolves to Yellowstone, there are success stories about restoring elk to previous habitats where they were hunted-out before the advent of hunting management. In Kentucky and western Pennsylvania, where restoration has been so successful, elk have become an important tourist revenue factor, and controlled, seasonal hunting has resumed. Even here in the Adirondacks, the return of beaver, small numbers of moose, and some bird species have already brought new revenue to local coffers.

Restoring Adirondack Megafauna

While the increasing numbers of deer and black bear constitute Adirondack mega fauna today, in the not so distant past, the ecosystem of the “forever wild” Adirondacks supported wolves, cougars, lynx, wolverine, moose, elk and wood bison.

Today, moose, recovering from a history of unrestricted hunting, probably number a very sparse 800 to 1,000 animals in New York, and the DEC is engaged in surveys to get a better handle on moose numbers, and whether they are increasing or, following the current trend in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Minnesota and Montana, decreasing.

Studies indicate that potential wolf recovery areas include the Adirondacks and northern New England.  At Adirondack Wildlife Refuge, we frequently receive photos of “Eastern Coyotes”, or what we call “coywolves” from Facebook followers, all asking whether these are “wolves”.

The coywolf is a wolf-coyote hybrid, and as the accompanying photograph from a trail cam at the Adirondack Wildlife Refuge shows, coywolves are sometimes twice the size of western coyotes, and often difficult to distinguish from wolves, especially for a layman who sees one for only a few seconds.

The largest obstacle to wolves returning to the Adirondacks is relentless hunting and trapping of wolves in southern Quebec and Ontario. For our purposes, bolstering the Adirondacks as a place where visitors may see wolves, is it so critical what percentage “wolf” our wolves are, when few visitors can distinguish gray wolves from Canadian wolves from coywolves?

Wandering, transient male cougars occasionally pass through the Adirondacks, but there is no evidence of female cougars raising kittens and defending territories anywhere east of Missouri and the Michigan Upper Peninsula. Male cougars will set up territories when they have sufficient prey, which they have in the Adirondacks, and female cougars in territories overlapped by their territories. Unlike the confusion between coywolves and wolves, it’s less difficult to mistake a cougar for, say, a bobcat or lynx. Without reintroducing cougars to the Adirondacks, particularly females, it is unlikely we’ll have a breeding population in the Adirondacks.

Starting in 1893, more than 300 Rocky Mountain Elk were released in the Adirondacks over six years, but were extirpated by hunting, poaching and the expansion of white tailed deer, who passed brain worm and round worm to the elk. Other than that experience, mentions of elk are only found historically.

Wood Bison have probably been gone for over 200 years, and I don’t believe there have been any specific studies about whether the Adirondacks, logged, cleared, reforested and generally altered over time, would offer suitable browse for elk and grazing for bison.

Lynx are occasionally reported in New York, but as with cougar, there is no evidence yet of breeding and setting up territories, although Sue Morse of Keeping Track has encountered them in northern Vermont. Eighty lynx from northwest Canada were radio collared and released in the Adirondacks, over a three year period starting in 1989 and some dispersed up to 400 miles from the release areas. Unlike the bobcat, which has a more generalized prey base, and whose numbers continue to expand in the Adirondacks, lynx are specialized snowshoe hare predators.

Wolverine were last reported in New York in 1840, and their smaller cousins, fishers, are doing well here, and expanding their ranges in New York State. Previous reintroductions of mega fauna often suffered from lack of funding for follow up.

The Adirondacks, Yellowstone of the East?

The ecological benefit of returning a keystone predator to Yellowstone was to restore some natural balance, but politics is never far from any discussions about wildlife and sustainability. In the years since wolf reintroduction, anger over real and imagined consequences of wolves in ranching and hunting country, led state legislatures to cancel the thirty mile no-wolf-hunting buffer zone within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem around Yellowstone National Park, and since wolves don’t know where the park boundaries lie, their numbers in Yellowstone have been cut in half by hunting. The newly elected Congress is more likely to weaken the Endangered Species Act, as well as return more control over wildlife and natural resources to the states. In other words, the positive effects of wolves returning to the Yellowstone ecosystem have been seriously compromised, as has the chances of tourists seeing wolves in Yellowstone. That leaves the Adirondacks with a outstanding opportunity to capitalize

Does all this mean that we could turn the Adirondacks into the Yellowstone of the East, by rewilding mega fauna? Well, not exactly. From a wildlife perspective, much of the allure of Yellowstone is its wide open vistas, meaning it’s much easier to spot large animals, while the Adirondacks is more characterized by mixtures of thick conifer and deciduous forest. As in many forested wildlife environments, when you hike in the Adirondacks, critters tend to hear you, see you or smell you, and flee before your approach, which is why you’re more likely to see wildlife while canoeing, or surprise wildlife while driving.

There is a much better model for a rewilded Adirondacks, and that is Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario, about two hundred ninety miles northwest of Lake Placid. Both parks are part of the Southern Canadian Shield, and are generally characterized as Eastern Boreal transition ecoregions. The Adirondacks has mountains, while Algonquin features rugged and rocky hills, but both have many lakes and waterways, and both are visually inspiring.

An Adirondack Opportunity

Algonquin forms a wildlife corridor with the Adirondacks, and comprises the northern end of an important gene exchange with the Adirondacks, mixing gene pools, as animals wander back and forth between ecosystems, just as the Adirondacks forms such a corridor with the Catskills and Appalachians. One of the most important challenges for parks and wildlife refuges is the dangers of genetic isolation, which impacts diversity within a species, or as we put it at the Refuge, “the key to wildlife survival is connected habitat”.

Algonquin has populations of Eastern Canadian wolves, deer, beaver, and may be the surest place in North America to see moose. Forty miles of Highway 60 runs through the southern end of the Algonquin Park, and is bordered by many bogs, beaver ponds and meadows, which attract moose at various times of year. Algonquin is also the only park I’ve visited, besides Yellowstone, where I’ve seen wolves multiple times.

Curiously, Highway 60 somewhat mirrors Route 3 in the Adirondacks. Picture, in particular, that sparsely populated, 40-mile long stretch of Route 3 between Tupper Lake and Star Lake, and like Highway 60, passes through areas where the forest is interrupted by lakes, bogs and beaver ponds, or the stretch between Paul Smith and Malone, or Tupper Lake and Old Forge.

The secret to successful wildlife tourism is often not only what you are very likely to see, but what you believe you may see. Imagine if we added to the various reasons to visit the Adirondacks, wildlife viewing, the outside chance of seeing a moose browsing in a beaver bog, or hearing a bull elk bugling in a meadow, or seeing a wolf or cougar crossing the road.

Even if we had cougar and wolf, the chances of seeing them in, say, the High Peaks area, would be very low, as there are fewer deer there, and too many people. If you’re staying at one of the large hotels in Lake Placid, where according to ROOST, most Essex County lodging dollars are spent, you may decide to take that picturesque drive from Saranac Lake through Tupper Lake and beyond.

What if you’re running a motel, inn or bed and breakfast in Tupper Lake, Cranberry Lake or Star Lake, and you add wildlife viewing to that list of amenities on Trip Advisor, Home Away or AirBnB, and feature photographs of wildlife taken by your guests?  What if you are a hunting or fishing guide, and you’re operating in an increasingly wildlife rich Adirondacks?

A rewilded Adirondacks would have a major tourist advantage over Algonquin. While Algonquin is only about a four hour drive from Toronto and three hours from Ottawa, the Adirondacks is within driving range of the much more populous New York, Buffalo, Boston, Albany, Hartford, Burlington and Montreal metro areas, and has a more robust hospitality infrastructure. In addition, access to Algonquin is remote, and once you’re within 100 miles of the east or west gates, you’re on two lane roads.

There are a number of non-profits currently working on rewilding, with habitat specialists and biologists taking a fresh look at an old topic, because they have learned much more about our habitat and its carrying capacity for wildlife, and like many others, they view the preservation of the wild as a legacy and a duty. They also see what is happening on the Federal level, and are thinking this may be an opportunity for visionary business, civic and both state and local political leaders, to examine a potential broadening of the Adirondack economy, and step up to promote a real return to “Forever Wild”.

Photo of the wolf courtesy Julie Clark.

Steve Hall

Steve and Wendy Hall run the Adirondack Wildlife Refuge and Rehab Center in Wilmington. They've been rehabbing and releasing wild animals for over 35 years, specialize in predators, keep wolves as the cornerstone of their educational program, and have lived in the Adirondacks for the past 13 years. The Adirondack Wildlife Refuge became a non-profit about 4 years ago.

Visit www.AdirondackWildlife.org to learn more.

- See more at: http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2014/12/the-economic-potential-of-rewilding-the-adirondacks.html#sthash.VJ4VZoe1.dpuf

We have Posted previously on what is known as the "Beau Geste Effect", the variety of sounds produced by each individual coyote, and the way these sounds are distorted as they pulsate through the air.................. This "Beau Geste Effect" can cause two "Song Dogs" yipping, barking and howling to sound like a serenade of 7 or 8 coyotes..........University of Vermont Professor Brian Mitchell has studied both Eastern and Western vocalizations and he has this to say about Coyote communication...... "The group yip-howl, initiated by a mated pair and often joined by yearlings is thought to have the dual purpose of promoting bonding within the family group while also serving as a territorial display and a warning for neighboring Coyote family units to stay away"................"Coyotes will also howl and bark separately". ..........."This second type of song is virtually always an indication of disturbance or agitation with, the higher the proportion of howls, the more agitated the coyote is"............."And just as human voices are individually specific, it seems likely the same holds true for Coyotes"..............."Characteristics including dominant pitch, duration, how quickly howls rise and fall in pitch, and tendency to “warble” while howling all distinguish one coyote from another"......................."Imagine a scenario where a lone coyote is patrolling the territory boundary and comes across an intruder"................... "He starts barking and howling, and his mate and beta children come running to the right place because his howls indicate how agitated he is, and his barks allow his family to pinpoint the direction and distance to his location".................. "Although I was not able to prove that coyotes can do these tasks, the information needed is present in their calls and there are strong evolutionary advantages to learning how to use it"

http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2014/03/coyotes-decoding-yips-barks-howls.html

click on above link to read full first article

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

click on below link to read 2nd article

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-help-decode-secret-language-wolves-215246873.html&ct=ga&cd=CAIyGjNiY2FkZTRjYzk3Y2I0MjI6Y29tOmVuOlVT&usg=AFQjCNFGHsLDbaTHGSJB6rEvg2JAICqvsA
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Coyotes: Decoding Their Yips, Barks, and Howls

by Guest Contributor

22 Comments

As the sunset colors fade from purple to black an eerie sound breaks the forest calm. It is not the long, low, slow howling of wolves that can be heard further north, but the group yip-howl of coyotes: short howls that often rise and fall in pitch, punctuated with staccato yips, yaps, and barks.

When people hear coyote howls, they often mistakenly assume that they’re hearing a large pack of animals, all raising their voices at once. But this is an auditory illusion called the “beau geste” effect. Because of the variety of sounds produced by each coyote, and the way sound is distorted as it passes through the environment, two of these tricksters can sound like seven or eight animals.

Group yip-howls are produced by a mated and territorial pair of “alpha” coyotes, with the male howling while the female intersperses her yips, barks, and short howls. “Beta” coyotes (the children of the alpha pair from previous years) and current year pups may join in if they are nearby, or respond with howls of their own. And once one group of coyotes starts howling, chances are that any other alpha pairs nearby will respond in kind, with chorus after chorus of group yip-howls rippling across the miles.

I spent seven years studying coyote vocal communication during my dissertation research at the University of California. While eastern coyotes are a larger and distinct subspecies from the western coyotes that I worked with, the basic findings of my research and the work done by others applies to all coyotes. Coyotes have sometimes been called “song dogs,” and their long distance songs come in two basic types.

The first, the group yip-howl, is thought to have the dual purpose of promoting bonding within the family group while also serving as a territorial display. In other words, the coyotes are saying “we’re a happy family, and we own this turf so you better keep out.” In a sense, the group howls create an auditory fence around a territory, supplementing the physical scent marks left by the group.

Coyotes will also howl and bark separately. This second type of song is virtually always an indication of disturbance or agitation, and in my experience, the higher the proportion of howls, the more agitated the coyote is. Coyotes will howl and bark at neighbors who intrude on their territory, and at dogs, people, and other large animals that they perceive as a potential threat.

My research documented that coyote barks and howls are individually specific. Much like we can tell people apart by their voices, there is enough information in coyote vocalizations for me (OK, my computer if you want to get technical) to tell individuals apart. If, as I suspect, coyotes can distinguish each other by their song, it would not be analogous to the animals constantly shouting their own names; it would be more akin to our ability to recognize Marlon Brando because of the distinctive timbre and cadence of his voice. Characteristics including dominant pitch, duration, how quickly howls rise and fall in pitch, and tendency to “warble” while howling all distinguish one coyote from another.

For howls, this individual distinctiveness does not fade with distance. I was able to record and identify individual coyotes over a distance of greater than one mile. Given their keen hearing, it is likely coyotes can discern individual howls at much greater distances —three miles or more on a calm night.
Barks, on the other hand, degrade quickly over distance, with the higher frequencies fading first. This makes it theoretically possible for coyotes familiar with an individual (say, a mate or family group member) to determine roughly how far away that individual is, based on the proportion of high frequencies in the barks.

Imagine a scenario where a lone coyote is patrolling the territory boundary and comes across an intruder. He starts barking and howling, and his mate and beta children come running to the right place because his howls indicate how agitated he is, and his barks allow his family to pinpoint the direction and distance to his location. Although I was not able to prove that coyotes can do these tasks, the information needed is present in their calls and there are strong evolutionary advantages to learning how to use it.

We still have much to learn about coyote vocal communication. Even after years of studying coyote calls, I was barely able to scratch the surface.

You can listen to the wide range of coyote sounds at Soundboard.

Brian Mitchell is an adjunct professor at the University of Vermont. Now that he has kids, that grad school schedule of getting up at 2 AM for field work sounds pretty relaxing. The illustration for this column was drawn by Adelaide Tyrol. The Outside Story is assigned and edited by Northern Woodlands magazine and sponsored by the Wellborn Ecology Fund of New Hampshire Charitable Foundation: wellborn@nhcf.org

- See more at: http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2014/03/coyotes-decoding-yips-barks-howls.html#sthash.9pH7OFq9.dpuf

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

Scientists Need Your Help to Decode the Secret Language of Wolves

By David Kirby | Takepart.com7 hours agoTakepart.com

Dogs bark, wolves howl, and coyotes yelp—but what are they saying? Researchers who are asking that question need your help. The answer could benefit the conservation of several species related to your household pooch.

Welcome to the world of canine crowdsourcing.

The Candid Howl Project, an international collaboration of biologists, behaviorists, sound experts and others is encouraging people to analyze thousands of recordings of dogs, dingoes, coyotes and wolves in the safety of their own homes. The nonprofit International Wolf Center recently asked its nearly 70,000 Facebook followers to volunteer.

western coyote

The information gathered will provide clues to the meaning of each type of howl, such as defense of territory or preparation for hunting.

The research might benefit endangered gray wolves, common targets of ranchers. “We are hoping…to identify clear differences between howls of different ‘meanings,’ ” Arik Kershenbaum of the University of Cambridge and the project’s creator, said in an email.

For example, how does a territorial howl differ from a group-cohesion howl. 

“If we could do that, it would be possible to develop active deterrent techniques to keep wolves away from ranches by playback of ‘appropriate’ recorded howls,” he said.

Volunteers are asked to listen to recordings online while viewing a spectrogram, or graphic image of the sounds, and then use their mouse to trace the strength and pitch of each howl. Every recording is heard by several volunteers, to ensure consistency among their analyses.

Why enlist the public?

“When we have many thousands of calls recorded, it would take a very long time to go through each one separately,” said Kershenbaum. “The human brain is the best pattern recognition system we know of, so it seems a natural solution to use multiple and unbiased humans to categorize the howls.”

Another goal is objectivity. “As researchers intimately involved with the project, we have to be very careful not to categorize the data subconsciously in a way that might affect the results,” he said.

The recordings were collected in the wild and at zoos—in addition to homemade recordings of domestic dogs, which owners can upload on the website.

The four wild species being analyzed are:

Gray wolves, which were almost hunted to extinction but are making a comeback.

Red wolves, rare North American animals with a population of 100 and listed as critically endangered. In 2013, 10 percent of the population was killed by hunters who mistook them for coyotes.

Coyotes, which are ubiquitous across North America and frequently hunted as pests. But as the only large predator in many regions, they play a crucial role in balancing ecosystems.

New Guinea singing dogs, a dingo similar to domestic dogs. Their 5,000-year isolated existence on Papua New Guinea has created unusual behaviors, especially their melodic “singing.”

Kershenbaum said the research could aid conservation.

“Uunderstanding the [vocal] behavioral difference between these closely related species can help us assess genetic isolation and hybridization,” he said.

Hybridization is a serious threat to red wolves, which breed with coyotes. “It would be useful to know whether the howls of the different species could act as a behavioral barrier to interbreeding,” Kershenbaum said. 

So why study dogs?

 “They largely bark rather than howl,” Kershenbaum conceded. “But some feral and ancestral dog breeds, such as dingoes, have more complex vocal behavior. Studying this can help us discover more about the process of the domestication of dogs.”

As for wolves howling at the moon, Kershenbaum called it more of a “legend” than a distinct behavior.

“Having said that,” he added, “examining how howling behavior changes under different environmental circumstances is definitely within our remit.

Good to see our friend Dr. Stan Gehrt who heads up the ongoing Chicago Urban Coyote Study rebutting the "alarmists" in Michigan who are making Eastern Coyotes out to be "boogey man scary freaks" ..........As Gehrt states: “They are eastern coyotes"............ “They aren’t really different from other coyotes, other than they have a little bit of genetic difference"............ "I’ve trapped and tracked hundreds of Midwestern coyotes and a pretty good sample of eastern coyotes in Nova Scotia, and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the two"................."Even if Eastern Coyotes are observed to hunt in packs and take down larger animals such as white-tailed deer, that’s behavior in which conventional coyotes occasionally engage as well"............. "The size of the range is more likely driven by the available food"............. "Eastern coyotes in Nova Scotia take down moose because of a lack of other food options".............."The idea that the 5 percent wolf DNA is having this impact on their morphology and ecology should be held up to some rigorous testing"........... “I think it would be more reasonable to presume it’s just not going to have that much effect"................."The eastern coyotes are fascinating animals"............... "Indians used to call the coyote the trickster, and say it had the ability to change shapes"............. “To me, this whole genetic thing is them getting back at us, and living up to their past label as tricksters"

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=http://www.salemnews.com/cnhi_network/florida-schedules-bear-hunting-season/article_887d8f49-feaf-5372-8c1d-0756b050d4f4.html&ct=ga&cd=CAIyGjU3MWM2ZjllNzE1ZmRjZDg6Y29tOmVuOlVT&usg=AFQjCNHpqiRrVy_Bl1wiGs88rtSjCXlfRA

University of Michigan researchers track coyote-wolf hybrids

Share on emailShare on facebookShare on twitterShare on printMore Sharing Services3

By KEITH MATHENY

Detroit Free Press

Published:March 2, 2015 8:17AM

A wolf and a coyote mated nearly 100 years ago. The result: the coywolf.

DETROIT (AP) — Phil Myers had heard the stories from Cheboygan County farmers: Tales of odd, oversized animals that looked bigger than a coyote, but smaller than a wolf, and hunted in packs — and how strange they sounded.

He wanted to hear for himself.

Wolves are known to have a rendezvous point where, in the evening, individual wolves that may be sleeping all over get together as a pack to go off hunting, said Myers, a now-retired professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan. Based at UM’s Biological Station in Cheboygan County, researchers had found dens, and what they thought was a rendezvous point

So, one night last August, Myers parked his pickup about a quarter-mile from the spot and listened.

“As the full moon goes up above the jackpines, one of these things starts howling — it wasn’t the yipping of a coyote or the full voice of a wolf; but a hoarse, sustained call,” he told the Detroit Free Press.

“About five minutes later, I hear a bark from my right, then a bark from my left, five or six of them. I was surrounded by them. But this was in forest and swampland; these were no dogs. Those were pack-mates coming into this rendezvous point.

“It was probably at least an hour before the hairs on the back of my neck sat down.”

Myers’ close encounter was with a unique, still relatively unknown and misunderstood hybrid of coyotes known as eastern coyotes or coywolves. They’re mostly coyote, but contain a small percentage of wolf from an unlikely mating of the two species about a century ago. It may sound like an urban legend, but coywolves exist throughout the northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada, and have been confirmed in northeast Lower Michigan through blood-testing and DNA analysis.

Coywolves tend to be a little larger and heavier than their western coyote counterparts, but still well below the size of even the smallest North American wolves. They look like coyotes, though observers often note wolflike characteristics in their faces and fur.

Though researchers have determined the range of coywolves — from the Great Lakes east and as far south as Virginia — their numbers and whether their behavior is distinctive from pure coyotes is still largely unknown.

Cheboygan County farmer William Benthem hasn’t seen them, but hears the stories from fellow farmers. They believe they’re seeing wolves, he said.

“I know too many people who are knowledgeable people who have seen them,” he said.

Coyote expert Stan Gehrt, a professor of wildlife ecology at Ohio State University, rejects the term “coywolf.” He doesn’t even like referring to them as hybrids. It leaves the impression that they are a near 50-50 mix of wolf and coyote, and that just isn’t the case, he said.

“They are eastern coyotes,” Gehrt said. “They aren’t really different from other coyotes, other than they have a little bit of genetic difference. I’ve trapped and tracked hundreds of Midwestern coyotes and a pretty good sample of eastern coyotes in Nova Scotia, and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the two.”

But those, including biologists, who encountered coywolves up close in the Lower Peninsula say they had some wolflike features.

The animal was discovered in the Pellston and Cheboygan area in 2010, after reports of unusually large tracks in the snow, Michigan Department of Natural Resources wildlife biologist Jennifer Kleitch said.

The DNR and the U.S. Department of Agriculture “became very interested,” thinking wolves may have appeared in the Lower Peninsula, Myers said. The last confirmed wolf south of the Mackinac Bridge was in Presque Isle County in 2004, but sightings have been reported since, and the DNR conducts surveys searching for wolves in the northern Lower Peninsula.

Trail cameras were installed in 2010, and some of the photos coming back showed animals that were “wolflike,” Kleitch said. A USDA wolf biologist trapped a male pup in July 2010 in Cheboygan County. Blood tests were taken, and the pup was ear-tagged and released.

Later that fall, a coyote trapper caught two half-grown animals, and noticing their difference from typical coyotes, contacted the DNR. As in July, blood samples were drawn and the animals were fitted with radio collars.

“They wanted to see how they were moving, and whether they are a problem for the farmers up there,” Myers said.

Kleitch got to see the coywolves that were trapped in October up close. She’d never seen anything like it.

“It was strange,” she said. “The nose was a little narrow for a wolf, but the feet were large like a wolf. They were the young of the year and they were females, and the weights on them were about 42 and 49 pounds — that’s pretty large for even an adult female coyote.”

After tracking the animals’ radio signals for several weeks, one of the collars began transmitting a mortality signal, Kleitch said. It was later found cut off and thrown into a ditch. “We presume the animal was poached,” she said.

But the other animal is still followed, with the help of Myers’ class at the UM Biological Station, she said.

Meanwhile, the genetic results came in on the three animals’ blood tests.

“The animals were all from the same litter, and typed out as coyote rather than wolf,” she said. They also had DNA from eastern wolves, the tests showed.

Based on the relatively low percentage of wolf DNA in coywolves, many scientists say the interspecies breeding occurred in the early 1900s, likely in Ontario as western coyotes migrated east from the Great Plains. Some split and headed north of the Great Lakes into Canada; others to the south around Ohio. Based on coywolves’ range now, it was a coyote in this northern group, perhaps having no mate of its own species available, that must have mated with a female eastern wolf. It’s known that the female in the coupling was a wolf, because the mitochondrial type of DNA exhibiting wolf characteristics is passed on by the female.

The eastward-migrating coyotes that went north of the Great Lakes and interbred with wolves grew and spread in population much more quickly than those without wolf DNA to the south.

Though highly unusual, coyotes, wolves and even dogs have been known to interbreed on occasion and produce viable offspring also capable of breeding.

“Wolves normally kill coyotes; they chase them out of the range,” Myers said.

But there is not a scientific consensus that the wolf-coyote coupling occurred long ago and not again. A 2012 study of the blood results of the three captured coywolves in northern Michigan concluded their hybridization could have occurred in the Lower Peninsula “if a recolonizing wolf encountered a coyote and mated with it in the absence of” another wolf with which to breed.

Researchers from the UM biological station last year tracked radio-collared coywolves, and found their range slightly larger than a typical coyote’s but less than a wolf’s.

OSU’s Gehrt, however, is skeptical. Even if coywolves are observed to hunt in packs and take down larger animals such as white-tailed deer, that’s behavior in which conventional coyotes occasionally engage as well, he said. The size of the range is more likely driven by the available food — eastern coyotes he has studied in Nova Scotia have taken down moose because of a lack of other food options, he said.

“The idea that the 5 percent wolf DNA is having this impact on their morphology and ecology should be held up to some rigorous testing,” Gehrt said. “I think it would be more reasonable to presume it’s just not going to have that much effect.”

Scientists still have a lot to learn about the animals, Gehrt said. Among the areas ripe for study is whether the small percentage of wolf DNA will start working its way into western coyotes, or whether it will be diluted away, he said.

Despite a belief that coywolves are more likely to take down a deer, Myers said he’s not aware of any instances of farmers’ cattle or sheep coming under attack in northeast Lower Michigan.

Management and regulation of the animals could become complicated. The hybrids — impossible to confirm without DNA tests — are simply treated as coyotes in Michigan.

“Coyotes can be hunted and trapped almost year-round, and wolves right now are endangered, so there’s no take,” Kleitch said. “It gets pretty sticky.

“We tell people that if it looks like a wolf, treat it like a wolf. That means if coyote hunters or trappers think it could be a wolf, they should not harvest that animal.”

There are two camps of thinking on coywolves, Myers said.

“One is that hybridization is bad, because it dilutes the genotype of the two species that are hybridizing. You’ll eventually lose the wolf genotype and the coyote genotype,” he said. “But other people feel like places like the Northern Lower haven’t had an apex predator for close to 100 years. The deer herd has gotten out of control — the deer hunters don’t agree with that; they think that there aren’t enough deer. But the numbers, we know, are nowhere near where they were 100 to 150 years ago.

“You’re always going to have one group of people who hate them, who have hated coyotes and were absolutely opposed to the growth of the wolf population. And then you’ve got other people who think it’s just kind of cool we’re getting a more natural, more balanced ecosystem in the forests up there.”

The eastern coyotes are fascinating animals, Gehrt said.Indians used to call the coyote the trickster, and say it had the ability to change shapes,” he said. “To me, this whole genetic thing is them getting back at us, and living up to their past label as tricksters.”

A decade ago, Lyme Disease was an east coast and mid west affliction, spread by the bite of the black-legged deer tick (Ixodes scapularis) which transmits the B. burgdorferi.spirochete into peoples bloodstreams..............The disease is spreading west via the western black-legged tick (Ixodes pacificus)..........Mammals can spread the tic to new regions and now it has been determined that common backyard birds are also quickening the movement of Lyme disease to western states............. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Lyme disease is the most commonly reported tick-borne illness in the United States...................... There are approximately 30,000 cases reported each year, with the large majority occurring in the eastern United States.................. However, because actual cases are often underreported to the CDC, the agency notes that the number of people in this country diagnosed with the disease every year may be 10 times higher..........The lyme spirochete is thought to be an "import" from Europe, another "exotic" organism that is making a walk in the woods a problematic affair for many of us.............Stay on trails, do not bushwhack,,,,,,,,,,,,,do not walk barefoot on lawns,,,,,,,,,,,,Sad but true until a serum is developed to create immunity to this debilitating vector that can cause heart, joint and paralysis problems in humans if not treated effectively early on via antibiotics

Study IDs key birds that host Lyme disease bacteria in California

click on link to read full story
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sciencedaily/plants_animals/ecology/~3/N0XFjCIaImA/150225151757.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email

The Golden-Crowned Sparrow, one of the 53 species 

of birds tested in the UC Berkeley study and a common

 sight in suburban areas, was revealed to be an

 important host of the LymeDisease-causing bacteria

 Borrelia burgdorferi.

Credit: Michael McCloy photo

Yes. the Midwest and the Northeast are getting "old school" winter cold and snow this year with records being matched and set.............One has to go back to the 1950's,,,,,then again to the 1930's and in some cases the mid and latter 19th century to see same type snow and cold.................The fact is that a whole generation of folks have grown up not knowing what cold and snow really can be about and not only has this made us as a society weaker in countenance(my view), but it has also retarded biodiversity as it relates to both carnivores and herbivores being able to "spread their wings" across rivers and lakes and add genetic vitality to populations of their own kind on the far side of these waterways.................Therefore, I was heartened to see the Eastern Coyote(see picture below) in Boston sprinting across the Boston Harbor last week...........Perhaps he or she will now end up mating with a fellow coyote on the other side(whatever that may be) of the Harbor,,,,,,,,,,infusing that geographic "song dog" population with some new genes to forge stronger and more resilient Coyote pups come this Spring

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/02/27/coast-guard-spots-coyote-running-across-frozen-bay/uyigPyMxxKxQ45POiDYi6J/story.html?s_campaign=8315

Coast Guard spots coyote on frozen Boston Harbor

By Steve AnnearGLOBE STAFF  

US COAST GUARD

Coast Guard crew members spotted a
 coyote on the frozen harbor.

FEBRUARY 27, 2015

The historically frigid February weather has produced

 an abundance of out-of-the-ordinary sights, including

 one for those aboard a US Coast Guard cutter in Boston

 Harbor.

Crews were breaking and chipping away at the ice 

clogging the harbor when they spotted a coyote in 

the middle of the frozen water.

“They were there on the boat, and the coyote 

was just out running on the ice,” said Petty

 Officer Myeonghi Clegg, a spokeswoman for 

the Coast Guard in Boston.

Clegg said she wasn’t sure how far out on

 the ice the coyote was when it was spotted 

darting across the frozen harbor in Quincy,

 but crew members had enough time to

 capture the image on Feb 20, and later

 share it on Facebook and Twitter.

The photo shows the animal in mid-stride,

 dashing through the snowy ice.

Clegg said the coyote isn’t the only

wildlife the Coast Guard has encountered
this month.

During a recent voyage smashing chunks
of ice so that ships delivering goods and
 heating oil can gain access to Boston Harbor,
crews spotted a deer stuck in the ice.

To assist the animal, a 65-foot Coast Guard
cutter inched close enough to break through
 some of the ice. Clegg said the deer was
then able to free itself and run back to shore.

Coast Guard members have been deployed
 to Hingham, Quincy, the Fore River area,
 and Boston Harbor in recent weeks trying
 to keep the shipping channels accessible.

“They have been out there everyday
 keeping the lanes open,” Clegg said.