Maine’s War on Coyotes

In my meadow—in back of the computer screen, amid lupine, phlox, high grass, and bluebird boxes—things happen that make writing difficult. On a summer morning a wild canid, sleek coat gleaming in the sun, leaps high, twists, swats the ground with huge forepaws. He is well muscled but, in late puppyhood, still gawky and playing as much as seriously hunting mice. His race, maybe not new but newly noticed, first got the attention of humans about 60 years ago. It has been called "coy dog," "coy wolf," "new wolf," "brush wolf," and, now, "eastern coyote."

The "coyote" part is misleading. Eastern coyotes are larger, heavier-set, and much more wolflike than their western cousins. They possess wolf genes, so maybe they interbred with wolves on their way east. Or maybe they were here all along, identified as small wolves whenever they were shot, trapped, or poisoned by the many people who hated them. When moonlight washes hardwood ridges, I like to howl at eastern coyotes; they answer me, then embark on prolonged conversations among themselves. Unfortunately for midlevel plant communities, shrub-nesting birds, and my wife's tulips, they kill very few deer in central New England.

They kill more deer in Maine, but not enough to limit the population, which has been growing for 20 years. Maine is the only state that sees fit to hire eastern-coyote–control agents for the alleged benefit of deer hunters, and one of the few states south of Alaska that still believes it's desirable or even possible to make more game by knocking off predators. Unlike wolves, eastern coyotes prefer low-energy pursuit. They'll take deer when varying hare (their favorite prey) are scarce or when they can do so safely and economically, as when the snow is deep and crusted and the deer are "yarded up" in thick conifers. But in the colder regions, where deer haven't been increasing, the limiting factor is poor winter habitat, not coyotes.

In June 1980, on my first assignment for Audubon, I joined a team from Maine's Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit and followed radio-collared eastern coyotes around Maine's western mountains. As far as the unit had been able to determine, in nine months 41 animals had killed zero deer. There had been deer hair in the scats, but in almost every case the researchers had been able to pinpoint the source: carrion. Documented stomach or scat contents had included varying hare, butterflies, beetles, grasshoppers, berries, apples, offal, fish, voles, aluminum foil, rope, leaves, leather, dog food, and dog-food bags. That year eastern coyotes made it onto the Maine Republican platform, where they were identified as one of just three environmental ills worthy of the party's consideration (the others being antipesticide sentiment and unfair property taxes).

At least with coyotes there was bipartisan agreement. When I had finished my work in the woods, I stopped by Augusta to visit Glenn Manuel, the father of eastern-coyote control. For helping get the state's Democratic governor elected, Manuel, a former state senator, had been appointed commissioner of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. He told me that coyotes threatened to eliminate Maine's deer herd and scoffed at his biologists who claimed otherwise. "[They] still believe in the balance of nature," he declared. "They're textbook boys." Later, without a shred of documentation, he publicly announced that "many does are found dead, but only the unborn fawn is eaten" and lamented that coyote snares were illegal. Even as commissioner, Manuel ardently supported the Dickey-Lincoln dams project, which would have destroyed 130,000 acres of habitat for deer and other wildlife, 268 miles of free-flowing trout water, and 30 wilderness ponds. And when he chaired a public meeting to consider reintroducing wildlife that had been extirpated from Maine, his biologists hid behind their clipboards when he urged them to "bring back" penguins.

Manuel, to borrow lyrics from folksinger Tom Rush, would have killed "a thousand coyotes, if [he] could only just find one." In 1980, the first full year of the control program he designed, the entire Maine warden force "controlled" three animals. But five years later the state legislature ordered the department to kill coyotes, authorizing it to hire private citizens as coyote-control agents and train them in the use of snares, now legal. About 60 of these agents have been snaring roughly 400 coyotes per season (winter and early spring). Last season, 51 killed 564, presumably as a result of liberalized regulations implemented after the legislature passed a resolution asking the department "to encourage the harvest of coyotes."

The public is unhappy about this. In Augusta, at the June 1, 2002, meeting of a group of angry citizens who call themselves the Nosnare Task Force, Susan Cockrell showed me a coyote snare. Basically, it's a noose made of stout cable. You hang it from a tree, and when the coyote sticks its head through the loop, it closes on the animal's neck. A floppy washer keeps the loop from loosening. Cockrell, one of the group's founders, teaches nature writing at the University of Maine at Orono. Other founders include her husband, Will La Page, a forestry professor at the same institution; wildlife biologist Debra Davidson; and registered Maine guide Daryle DeJoy.

They plied me with internal correspondence they had excavated from the bowels of the department under threat of Maine's Sunshine Law, a state version of the Freedom of Information Act. As I perused the reports, memos, and e-mails, the value of the law became increasingly apparent. Without it, the public would never know what wildlife biologists think about coyote control or how the state legislature had secretly and successfully pressured the department into liberalizing the regs. Lawmakers had opted for a resolution rather than a bill because resolutions don't require public participation.

Department biologists repeatedly observe that killing coyotes stimulates reproduction and that in order to lower a population you have to remove at least 70 percent of the animals every year. But even with the relaxed regs, the control agents are getting only 4 percent. In areas off-limits to coyote controllers (Yellowstone National Park and the Hanford nuclear site in Washington State, for example), an average of fewer than two pups make it to fall. In "normal areas," where humans are busy killing the coyotes' main competition—i.e., other coyotes—the figure is about six.

Moreover, coyotes are highly territorial. An alpha male might be defending a cedar swamp, killing deer when conditions are right—say, four a winter. If that coyote is snared, half a dozen subordinate coyotes might move in and kill 24 deer. In 1946 federal agents killed 294,000 coyotes in 17 western states. In 1974—after 28 years of intensive trapping, shooting, and poisoning—they killed 295,000 in the same 17 states. When populations increase, so do ranges. Some scientists believe that coyote persecution in the West is why there are coyotes in the East.