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Project Coyote promotes education

WILTON – The coyotes are here. They are going to stay, so we might as well adapt to coexisting with them.

Chris Schadler of N.H./Vermont Project Coyote presented a program on the animals at the Collaborative Space on Wednesday, Sept. 21, sponsored by the Wilton Public/Gregg Free Library. About 15 people attended.

Project Coyote promotes education and co-existence with coyotes and is advocating for eliminating year-round hunting of coyotes.

Schandler is a co-founder of N.H. Wildlife Coalition which defends predators and raises a public voice for wildlife. They are trying to convince the N.H. Fish and Game Department to change some of their policies.

She began with a general history of the area’s predators including bobcats and fishers. The fisher, she said, is endangered.

When Europeans arrived, they cleared the forest driving out all the larger animals. Some of them, such as caribou, will never returned.

The coyote is the only native North American dog. Our version, the Eastern coyote, is a product of the western, smaller, coyote, interbreeding with the northern red world. DNA analysis, she said, has confirmed the wolf heritage. They can range in color from white to black with some larger individuals resembling wolves.

Coyotes live in family units with one breeding pair. They mate for life, self-regulate the size of the pack and are very territorial. A coyote lives three to four years and 2/3 of females never breed. Mortality rate among pups is 50 to 75 percent.

The coyotes came with the reforestation of the east, she said. The eastern form lives east of the Great Lakes and into Canada.

Schadler began her studies with wolves in the mid-west. On moving to N.H. she acquired a sheep farm which had been continually ravaged by coyotes. She set out to co-exist. By improving fences and keeping lambs inside at night, she said, she never lost a sheep.

“Care and tight fences, and maybe a dog, will protect stock. Electric mesh fences will protect free range chickens.”

Hunting will not rid the area of coyotes, she said. They have been trying out west for a hundred years using every method imaginable. “You can’t get rid of them. Adapt and protect your pets and livestock and be aware.”

Project Coyote advocates closing the hunting season during the time the pups are in their den, April and May. They also ask farmers to not cut hay until late in June.

Coyotes are scavengers as well as predators, she said. If a hunter guts his deer in the woods, there are probably coyotes waiting for him to leave. Their main diet is rodents – mice, chipmunks, squirrels – but they also eat nuts and berries, and whatever else they can find. Cats are a common prey. So keep them in at night.

“People are not on their menu,” she stressed, although there is an occasional animal that will attack a person, usually to protect pups or territory.

“Killing coyotes increases the size of the litters to compensate,” Schadler said. “It is better to keep the packs small.”

She emphasized that the coyotes are not impacting the deer herd, although they will take a fawn, many are ill or injured deer. “We have plenty of deer.” Predators regulate the deer herds.

Although a coyote can breed with a domestic dog, such crosses usually do not live because of genetic difference. There are very few coy dogs.

“So take care,” she said, and learn to live with them. “They are beautiful animals.”

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