The story behind the mysterious appearance of the eastern coyote gets more complicated with every book I read on the subject. The fact the eastern coyote is so much larger than his western cousin and behaves so differently is a story that is still unwinding and no one yet knows what the final outcome will be. As the eastern coyote continues to evolve, what it will eventually become depends on many factors including the attitude and behavior of humans toward it. The story has so many angles I barely know where to start. Hopefully, I won't lead you astray, because what I say here is not written in cement.
Some background information is necessary. Since 1992 there has been a movement afoot to restore the wolf to the Northeast. This was a wild and crazy idea to most people at first, but it grew through the 1990's to more than just a vision. Some 30 environmental organizations merged to form CREW, the Coalition to Restore the Eastern Wolf. They were able to get the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to promise a feasibility study for northeastern wolf re-introduction.
This is more than just a movement to restore the wolf to his old haunts in the northeastern forest. It is really about the restoration of wilderness to the northeast which includes the reintroduction of all the extirpated wildlife – the lynx, cougar, elk, and Atlantic salmon as well as the wolf. It is about our relationship with the other inhabitants of our continent, about values and the attitudes of the American citizen in the restoration of the natural environment. The time is ripe. In 1850, the farmers of New England began leaving their marginal and depleted farms to settle in the Midwest and far west. At that time New England was 70 – 80% deforested. Now, 150 years later, New England is just the reverse, 70-85% forested and parts of it are less populated than it was in 1850. Vermont, for example, has fewer people today that it had in 1850. While the other forests of the world are being depleted, the northeastern forest of the United States has grown back, making it the best place in America to restore the ecological health of an entire landscape.
Consequently, a group of conservationists got together in 1992 and formed RESTORE: The North Woods. They proposed a Maine National Park and Preserve. Much of the land in Maine, some 10 million acres, is privately owned by a handful of timber and paper companies. The remoteness of the area prevents people from permanently settling there. Nearby to the south are the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire and the Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont. These forests provide buffers. The proposed park would cover 3.2 million acres, making it larger than Yellowstone and Yosemite combined. It would also balance the discrepancy of U.S. parks between the east and the west. The biggest threat to the proposed Maine National Park is 2nd home development which, between 1998 and 2000, saw the sale of 3.8 million acres to the highest bidder. The opportunity for such a wilderness park is swiftly closing. It is unfortunate that the current congress and administrative branch of the United States is not sympathetic to this cause. No help is coming from our government, but other organizations have joined in support and the Nature Conservancy is attempting to buy large parcels of land. There is still some hope that a Maine National Park can be achieved, but the window of opportunity is disappearing.
If the land can be acquired, one of the first projects in restoring this wilderness is to re-introduce the wolf. Why? This canine had the widest distribution of any carnivore in the world. That alone says something about the wolf's importance in the balance of ecosystems. Before any human settlers moved in, the wolf, being a summit predator, prevented the moose, caribou, deer and beaver from over browsing and destroying the habitat. Since their near extermination around 1900 the deer, moose and beaver have returned to New England and have become abundant, so the table is set for the return of the wolf. Keeping the range healthy benefits all animals in the ecosystem which makes the wolf an umbrella species as well. Wolves also exclude coyotes, a predator that can survive close to humans, and one that does more damage than wolves to livestock.
The benefits of wolf re-introduction are numerous, but after over a hundred years of his absence in a changed environment, how feasible is it? Wolf recovery is not the simple matter of putting the wolf back into his abandoned home. Things are different today. With the wolf gone, the coyote was free to move in, and did so, but he didn't completely fill the wolf niche. The coyote does not prey on moose, and when deer become scarce, coyotes do not rely on beaver as does the wolf.
The coyote is here and well established, but he is considerably different morphologically and behaviorally than his western cousin. It is believed he came from the west, but how did he get here? And, is he still a full blooded true blue coyote? The answer to the first question is we aren't completely sure and the answer to the second question is a definite no. The eastern coyote differs from the western coyote by the lack of foot-sweat, a larger skull (although smaller than that of a wolf), more weight and less aggressiveness toward its mate or siblings. These are all wolf traits. That makes the eastern coyote sort of an intergrade between the wolf and western coyote and suggests the two have interbred. But how can this be when wolves normally kill coyotes that range into their territory? Because of this wolf intolerance of their smaller relative, coyotes have never been very numerous where there are wolves. But biologists, through DNA analysis, are finding wolf genes in eastern coyotes. Under what circumstances would breeding between these two competitive species have taken place? This is where human meddling enters the picture.
Wolves are very sociable and survive only in packs. In the 19th and early 20th century wolves were persecuted wherever possible in the United States with the goal of exterminating them. As the wolves declined, the coyotes moved into their territory and encountered lone wolves from broken packs. Their mates gone, male wolves mated with the only breeding animals they could find - female coyotes. Mitochondrial DNA testing has shown this was the only way it occurred (male wolves to female coyotes) because female wolves would probably not tolerate the advances of the smaller male coyote. This hybridization likely took place in Ontario. Genetic tests on blood taken from radio collared Algonquin wolves showed hybridization had occurred in 16% of the samples. Minnesota wolves, being more remote and escaping the shooting, did not show any coyote contamination. Then the wolves were given full protection by the Endangered Species Act in the U.S. and in the parks of Canada. Once the packs were reformed and healthy, hybridization with the coyote stopped.
With the increasing deer herds in the mid-Atlantic States, the new coyotes with their wolf genes expanded out of Canada into New York and Pennsylvania where the population slowly increased. Breeding among themselves without the introduction of any more wolf genes, these animals evolved into today's Eastern coyote, classified as a coyote by biologists, but different than the western variety. Today the eastern coyote is found in every county in the keystone state.
This relatively new animal is still evolving and adapting to the eastern habitat. In the Adirondacks Bill McKibben reports that coyotes are hunting deer in packs. This is typical wolf behavior. Are coyotes doing this in Pennsylvania? Thus far, the evidence for this type of behavior is very scanty. Pennsylvania coyotes are known to prey on fawns in the spring, but coyote-killed adult deer carcasses are rare.
More studies of the eastern coyote needs to be done since the numerous studies of the western coyote do not apply. We really don't know the eastern coyote very well, principally because he is still evolving. What he will become is anybody's guess. The coyote is a highly adaptable animal and the Pennsylvania landscape is in a high state of change due to logging, development, invasive species, a large deer herd that is changing the forest composition, and new methods of farming. Faced with this constant flux of environmental conditions, it is difficult to gauge how the coyote will adapt. So is the coyote becoming a wolf? In the Adirondacks he seems headed that way. In Pennsylvania the jury is still out. Can he stay a coyote and replace the wolf? I have little hope conservationists can bring enough land into the public domain in the Northeast to re-introduce the wolf, so whether or not the eastern coyote can fill the ecological niche of the wolf remains a story to be seen in the decades to come.
