Interesting Article on Wildlife Services

There are so many problems with killing coyotes that it is highly doubtful that Wildlife Services is a cost-effective operation. Are we spending more on killing coyotes than it would cost to simply pay ranchers for the livestock lost? If we are paying a thousand dollars to kill coyotes who, if left uncontrolled, would kill only $500 worth of lambs, what are we gaining by killing the coyotes?

Killing wolves causes the coyote population to increase. Killing coyotes causes the rodent population to increase. We're fighting a battle against nature and nature has a way of compensating for anything we do. Some research has shown that if we kill 70% of the coyote population, their numbers will rebound within a couple years. So we would have to kill such a large proportion of the coyote population every year to ever actually reduce their numbers.

But Wildlife Services is not reducing coyote numbers. Coyote populations have expanded ever since Wildlife Services and earlier agencies began operation. And it is doubtful that coyote populations would have expanded any faster if Wildlife Services had done nothing. It's a big fallacy of wildlife science to think that the number killed is the number that the population is reduced. But it rarely works that way. Killing coyotes causes their birth rates to increase such that the faster we kill them, the faster they multiply.

So as the article mentioned, now the thought is to acknowledge that we can hardly do anything to reduce the coyote population in the long term. So the concentration is on reducing the coyote population in the short-term interval when lambs are youngest and most vulnerable. But such a concentration of resources raises the question of how we can concentrate the human labor necessary to do all the work of Wildlife Services during a short time span and leave the agency idle for the rest of the year. That creates a labor problem and perhaps increased expenses.

Another idea the article suggests is to create a population of "guard coyotes." In effect, don't kill the coyotes on the immediate perimeter of a livestock operation. Rather concentrate on inhibiting their willingness to kill livestock such as sheep. Then that territorial perimeter of coyotes in effect will guard the livestock operation from surrounding coyotes that may still be inclined to kill livestock.

That's an idea I'd like to see more information on. A really big problem with randomly killing predators of any sort is that we tend to kill the "good predators" with the "bad predators." Instead, we may need to concentrate on preserving the predators that are not a problem so that they can control the predators that are a problem to us. Randomly killing predators disrupts the very social and territorial structures of those animals, natural tendencies that could be an advantage for us to retain.

I tend to agree with Absarokanaut that fladry (colored strips of cloth on fence lines) is not ultimately going to be very effective. Coyotes and wolves are smart enough to figure out that fladry is no real threat to them. Now the article mentions a device that flashes random lights at night to ward off coyotes. It's worth a try, I suppose, but it still involves us working against nature rather than with it. Unfortunately, our biggest problem is just that. In fighting nature, we're biting the hand that feeds us.