“Coyotes, like humans, are unusually adaptable to their environments, which is why they have been making homes in urban places, like you see here. Unlike most other wild predators in the U.S., their populations have continued to thrive: where they had once been limited to the southwest and prairies of North America, they are now in every state except Hawaii. And their success is certainly in spite of U.S. government policy in the previous century and a half.
Starting in the late 1800s, and informed by ranchers and farmers who were concerned about protecting their domesticated animals, the U.S. government launched an attack against wild predators that very nearly caused the extinction of many North American mammals: mountain lions, bison (not predators but taking up land that farmers wanted) and especially wolves were on the hit list.
Unwittingly, the loss of the wolf as apex predator left a vast ecological niche for coyotes, and no matter how hard the government wanted to eradicate them, their populations continued. Resorting to poison — strychnine, Thalium sulfate, and Sodium fluroroaretate (aka compound 1080) were three of the most employed — government agencies sanctioned the killing of millions of America’s charismatic vertebrates. One official tallied the kills of coyotes in the U.S. from 1915-1947 at 1,884,897.
The coyotes’ intelligence explained their survival into the current century. Unlike wolves, coyotes thrived both as solitary and as pack hunters. Their food came from a myriad of sources, including vegetative. Most interestingly, they varied their population to fit their environment, birthing much larger pup litters in times of need — their barks would alert a coyote population to the availability of mates.
Source(s): _Coyote America_, Dan Flores (Basic Books: NY), 2016.
