"4: Stindby, ‘October 6; 1985"-"North Shoré News

Coyotes not ali bad

I SEE people in Pemberton Heights and other
parts of the North Shore are being harassed by
coyotes. According to residents, there is a pack of
them living in McKay Creek Park. |

Several pets in the area,
dogs and cats alike, have
reportedly been eaten by the
coyotes. So there is
understandably a certain
amount of tension in the air.

There is a solution to the
problem. I'll get to that in a
minute. First, a bit of histo-

ry. In Boy Scouts, I was a
member of the Coyotes
Patrol, so I’m partial to
them.

Th: coyote used to have
many names, among them
an the “burrowing dog’’, ‘wolf

oF of the plains’, ‘‘cayeute’’,
we “Cojote’ and coyotl until a

Sort biologist settled on Canus

wen latrans. It used to live main-

ne ly in the prairie country of

° the American southwest, but

as Europeans pushed into

these lands with their farms

and pastures and guns and

_ 7 traps and poison, the coyote
sts fled north and west.

ee - On the Canadian prairies,

when it arrived, it was

Bh known as a “‘brush wolf”

ad for its habit of avoiding the

open plain where the buffalo -

and antelope had already

a been done in. The coyote

corre learns, you see. It.is the least
no dumb of animals. . :

_ It wasn’t until as late as

' the Klondike Gold Rush in

reached . the »Pacific Nor-
_thwest, following the pack
. eo] - trains of prospectors. To-
mn ; -. day, it is as familiar in the
ms . . Yukon as it was a century
vote ago in Arkansas. Coyotes

Cs “range nowadays from Point

a, re Barrow, Alaska, as far south
A Me . as Costa Rica.

Me -. The reason we're seeing

a coyotes on the North Shore

A ; ; ‘lately is a direct result of the

ee, ; _.. termination of large-scale

toes “poisoning programs in the

-Frascr Valley over.a decade

ago. ‘The - reason - “the. :pro-

grams. were ended*is simply |
“thatthe toxins used:to. kill.

fac the coyotes inevitably. found
es \ ‘their’ way back into the ‘en-
oye vironment, ultimately, affec-:
ting the water ; and ‘soil and -

the 1890s that the coyote.

other animals,

One of the poisons used,
by the way, was Compound
1080, a favorite of the Fish
and Wildlife Department,
which has applied several
times in recent years to the
Pesticide Control Branch for
permission to re-introduce a

massive predator control
program aimed at coyotes.

Wisely--and, I might add,
compassionately--the branch
has turned down the re-
‘quests. Apart from eventual-
ly poisoning other animals,
including pets, Compound
1080 is a slow-acting toxic
that inflicts some 30 hours
of hideous suffering on an
animal before killing it.

For the record, the notion -
that ALL coyotes will eat
chickens or cats or other
domestic creatures has been
repeatedly proven wrong.
The definitive studies; done
in the 1940s, showed that
only certain individual
animals indulge in this sort
of thing, not the coyote
population at large, which
confines itself to going after
rats, rabbits, ground squir-
rels and other rodents.

When a vicious dog ap-
pears in the neighborhood,
nobody thinks of killing all

the: dogs, just the vicious

one. Similarly we have to
learn to discriminate be-

* tween “‘good’’ coyotes and.

: “bad” ones.

- Keep i in mind that coyotes .

a ia “Introducing |
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have an invigorating effect
on the species they hunt,
weeding out the weak and
diseased. They also help to
keep deer and antelope and
other hoofed mammals Iit-
erally on their biological
toes, whereas, otherwise,
they might get lazy and
develop cirrhosis of the liver.

On balance, according to
no less an authority than
Paul Gilbert, secretary of the
Nebraska Game, Forestation

domestic animals.

The trick is to deal with
these mavericks. And the
way to do it is by the
judicious application of taste
aversion techniques such as
the use of lithium chioride,
which is basically a salt that
causes severe vomiting.

A few dead cats or dogs
from the pound, laced with
lithium chloride, used as bait
would cause the problem
coyotes 10 become violently

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‘personal

Cece |e just suggested. In the

by Bob Hunter

ill. I'm told there are films
that show a wolf cowering in
terror at the sight of a lamb
after being through the taste
aversion experience.

Officials of the SPCA,
police and provincial wildlife
Service say there’s nothing

Probleins?
Call us at 875-0277

Pacific Hearing Clinic

strictly

they can do about the coyote _ ” §14:2525 Willow St at Broadway -
problem. That's not quite Hours 9-7 Mon-Sat:
true. They could do what ‘ Neil Walton MSc. Audiologist

Harold Janzen MSc. Audiologist.

one call does tall 986-6222

case of the wildlife service,
whose responsibility it really
is, what they mean is that
their budget has been hacked
: to the bone, and they can’t
and Parks Commission, only afford to do anything.
about 20 per cent of the That’s not the’same as being
members of any coyote pack truely helpless. It’s a matter
are liable to go after of policy.

LETEPLET TEE

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