Coyote numbers are soon expected to peak in Ontario

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Though coyote numbers are at an all-time high in Ontario, the good news is that they are expected to level off and then drop in the next few years

by DON STONEMAN

There's good news and there's bad news about coyotes in the province of Ontario, says Ministry of Natural Resources biologist Brent Patterson.

First, the bad news. Coyote numbers have been building for years and are likely at an all-time high in Ontario. Now for the good news. Those numbers are expected to peak in the next year or two and drop off.

Fewer coyotes in the future is good news for livestock farmers and also for taxpayers. The provincial government, which compensates livestock farmers for losses when its valuators confirm that livestock was killed by coyotes, is adding to the list of livestock categories where compensation is allowed.

The ministry's estimates on coyote numbers are based upon surveys of deer hunters after the season is over. Hunters are asked if they see coyotes or their kills and, in the north, if their scat is observed. The ministry plots the responses, Patterson says.

In most areas of southern Ontario, Patterson sees a steady increase over the last decade. In some areas numbers peaked one or two years ago and are now in decline.

One area where Patterson says coyotes are now in decline is Prince Edward County. In recent years, the county has been a hotbed of coyote activity, including livestock kills. Patterson says Prince Edward County farmers are experiencing fewer coyote problems than several years ago but still consider them a nuisance.

Why do coyote numbers fall? Diseases such as mange can reduce the numbers of coyotes in an area. There's been some suggestion that this happened in areas north of Toronto several years ago, Patterson says. We'll have to wait and see if that occurs elsewhere.

Patterson has been tracking coyote activity in Prince Edward, using radio collars placed on animals that were live-trapped and then released. One goal of the tracking study is to gather more information about the size and range of groups of coyotes. While the research is still in the early stages, it's apparent that the group size of coyotes has increased, he says. Coyotes will hunt in large groups if there is lots of food.

Patterson studied coyotes in Nova Scotia in the 1990s. His research then showed that coyotes worked together in packs where there was a lot to eat. The young animals in the pack dispersed if food was scarce, he says.

Coyotes are territorial. There tends to be only one breeding group per piece of ground. The size of territories he sees in Ontario varies from six to seven square kilometers to 15 to 20 square kilometres. Those are all quite small compared to what we found in the 1970s, and what we see in other areas, so the density of coyotes (in Prince Edward) is fairly high, he says.

One goal of the ministry's Prince Edward study is to determine what segment of the coyote population is responsible for depredation, and whether current control measures are effective at removing offending animals.

Scientific literature shows that, in Western states, just the breeding males are responsible for attacking livestock. If that is the case in Ontario, then removing specific animals is a good tactic.

Patterson says one measure that works against specific animals is to bring in a hunter who can call predators immediately after a livestock kill is found. The offender is likely to still be in the area. A large scale hunt a week later is likely to remove a number of coyotes that had nothing to do with the livestock kill, which may, or may not, reduce predation.

Sometimes the people with heavy losses are employing pretty good measures to defend their flocks or herds against predators, Patterson says. On the other hand, we saw one farm (in Prince Edward County) where they didn't even have (electrified) fences and we were aware of no losses at all. It was hard to explain.

One possible reason is that not all coyotes have a natural tendency to attack livestock. If you live in an area and you aren't experiencing losses and you know you have coyotes around . . . it is in your best interest to leave those animals be. If you remove that pack, more animals will very quickly move in, and they may be predisposed to attacking livestock. He adds that this is a hard message to get out there.

Part of the ministry's project on coyotes is to try to collect coyote DNA from dead livestock so as to develop a DNA data base. We might find that either a few or a large number of coyotes had anything to do with livestock depredation, he speculates.

DNA sampling from across Ontario has already made some things clear about coyotes in Ontario. The coyote in Ontario is a hybrid of the western coyote and the Eastern Wolf. As far as we can tell, the coyotes across southern Ontario are part of one big population. We don't see any evidence of two separate species or breeds of coyotes in the province, Patterson says.

Because of mixed ancestry, they have a wide range of appearances, Patterson says. Somebody brought a picture in last winter of one that really looked like a collie dog. We thought we would find some dog DNA, but we didn't.

Something else that is for certain is that there is little influence from domesticated dogs.

There is very little evidence of them persisting in the wild.

Patterson says coy-dog crosses have three strikes against them. First, the offspring are highly infertile. Second, unlike coyotes and wolves, male coy dogs have no instinct to provide food for mother and babies.

The final nail in the coffin, says Patterson, is that coy dog cross females come into heat two months earlier than coyotes or wolves and drop their pups in the winter. The chance of coy dog pups surviving in the wild and passing their genes on is very slim, he says.

The fact that male coyotes do help feed the young is more evidence of how and why these animals persist even in intensive agricultural areas of the province. BF