Coyotes: Reviled Varmints or Constant Compatriots?

Are coyotes varmints to be reviled or reflections of transcendent beings worth worshiping? It depends on whom you ask.

Humanity is conflicted, and perhaps always has been, about coyotes. On the pest side of the ledger, coyotes have probably always been at least a nuisance to humans who raise domesticated animals. Not long ago I watched The Biggest Little Farm, a documentary about an idealistic couple who decide to develop a sustainable farm on 200 acres outside of Los Angeles. 

These folks faced a lot of different problems, but one of biggest was the coyotes that massacred their chickens. It’s one thing to hear about such events in the abstract, but the movie helps you realize just how devastating such events can be to farmers. By the time our narrator John Chester finally shoots one of the coyotes, we understand his frustration.

In the end, though, John comes to realize that if he can keep the coyotes out of the hen house (he seems to succeed by using a combination of dogs and fencing), then those same varmint animals can help control the gopher population on the farm, which is wreaking havoc on their orchards.

These sustainable farmers are far from the only people battling coyotes. Some sources suggest coyotes may result in considerable lost livestock per year. What makes coyotes so dangerous as predators is their intelligence and adaptability. It’s said coyotes will observe landowners, watching their comings and goings, to time their raids to when they’re least likely to encounter human resistance.

On the other hand, the United States Department of Agriculture reports that “the majority of the coyote’s diet is comprised of rodents and other small animals” and that “many coyotes do not prey on livestock.” It notes killing livestock appears to be a learned behavior not shared by all coyotes. In some cases, coyotes may even become “an asset to landowners by defending a territory against other coyotes and keeping other predator numbers low.”

And not just other predators. Even as far back as 1887, the Salt Lake Weekly Tribune ran an article which noted that the locals had killed off the coyotes via poison, only to watch the wild rabbit population grow to such a degree that they devastated crops. The Tribune reported that “the farmers pray for coyotes now.”

So, again, we see that coyotes can be beneficial to farmers…especially if they’re the right coyotes.

Benefits can even appear in urban settling. A study of the coyotes in Chicago’s Cook County suggests that coyotes “earn their keep eating small rodents, especially rats and voles.” Indeed, it’s thought that one reason coyotes can often be found around humans is that they’re after the rodents that inevitably come with human habitations, a tradition that dates back to at least the Aztecs.

So, despite the fact that they are still regularly poisoned, shot and trapped (a recounting of the long war waged on them is too horrific to detail) , coyotes keep finding their way into human towns and cities because that’s where they can prosper. They’re not likely to become “man’s best friend” as are domesticated dogs (which are descended from wolves), but they are likely to continue to be our compatriots, like it or not. Indeed, this relationship is an aspect of how they became such a deep part of the American mythos, as we’ll discuss next time. 

Note: Featured image by USDA - USDA Wildlife Research Center media database Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by User: Quadell using CommonsHelper., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...

Note: Image of sitting coyote by Frank Schulenburg, Coyote (Canis latrans) in Bernal Heights, San Francisco, California. 

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