The convention is in town

As summer fades and nights turn crisp, a coven of coyotes arrive in the bottom lands west of the bog and announce themselves through yips, yaps, howls, and some improbable sounds that suggest the occult.

Well, not really – but I do think there is something more than accidental in this coyote flash mob. I’ve been here through twelve autumns and, give or take a week or two, these canine cousins predictably whip themselves into an audio tizzy that must be heard to be appreciated.

Usually solitary hunters with a range of some 15-20 miles, coyotes are basic opportunists. Carrion, grasshoppers, rodents, nesting waterfowl – even small pets – are on the menu. Increasingly, these predators are finding their way into urban centers and suburbs.

There are some well researched opinions that credit the loss of wolves with the increase of coyotes. Wolves were among the mammals at the top of the food chain in North America for centuries and became subject to eradication as livestock farming increased. Knocking off the top predator does have consequences – the lower predators then become more prevalent. Skunks, raccoons, opossum, and the coyote have flourished without the wolf packs. These “lesser” predators seek different meals that especially include the eggs of ground nesting avians.

I remember, during my tenure at Ducks Unlimited, significant arguments among learned biologists as to the appropriate response to this situation. A school of thought argued for predator control – determined eradication of the “lesser” predators from principal breeding grounds to allow more nesting success. Another school argued that if habitat was restored in large sections (that is, nesting grounds were not fragmented), nesting waterfowl would have sufficient success.

I listened respectfully to both sets of arguments and can appreciate both – not so much regarding nesting success, but more so because there is a broader application.

Often, well intentioned actions can be the first domino in a string of causality that inevitably works antithetically to the initial goal. We want to help someone, we become an enabler; we want to remedy a situation, and we deprive someone of personal growth; we demand peace and all we do is find a temporary truce without addressing fundamental issues.

Centralized social engineering is a dangerous thing – I don’t know that any person, committee, or legislature can fully anticipate the fallout of well-intentioned social fiddling. In the early 1900s, there were factions advocating eugenics in our country – that is, the forced "hygiene" of the human race where the mentally or physically impaired were prevented from procreating in an effort to improve the gene pool. I hope you are as aghast reading this as I am writing this.

Back to the bog. For some reason, the coyote gather and hoot and holler as summer ends. Their abundance is arguably due to the eradication of wolves. Additional predators abound as well. When there is a determined effort to affect a population, unintentional results soon follow. Let’s stop trying to centrally control things.

(Image reported to be in the public domain - acknowledgement to website http://www.wpclipart.com/animals/C/coyote/coyote.png.html for the coyote image)