The coyote “problem”

Due to the rising population of humans all across the world, species are starting to get pushed out. When species attempt to live within the human society they are always targeted. They usually are targeted in ways that are truly unsustainable and unethical. One species that has seen this since the beginning of human expansion is the coyote. The coyote has recently gotten a lot of attention in the United States, this has lead to many extreme actions to take place. When you think about what a coyote can actually do that causes all this negative publicity nothing really comes to your head, but in 1990 183 pet were killed in the United States, and those were just the documented ones (Connolly 1995). But those numbers are nothing compared to the money that they cost farmers. In 1990 9.9 million dollars of damages were done to just livestock alone in the US. 52,000 lamb were killed by coyotes in that year as well (Connolly 1995). But what are people doing to stop this? They trap and poison them or in places like South Carolina they create a bounty program.

The bounty program is the main point that I want to focus on. In South Carolina they tagged 16 coyotes and if you kill one you get $1000 dollars and a hunting license. Sounds like a good idea right…. No. This has been proven not to work in may places throughout The United States. The best example is Michigan. Michigan once had a bounty, which lead to the population to increase. This really doesn’t make sense to common people but when you look at it biologically of curse the population increased. With lower competition the more successful the breeding pairs were. So why is South Carolina trying the same thing? I have no clue. I believe the whole this is just a major waste of money. Michigan had to reintroduce the grey wolf to lower the coyote population. So why don’t we introduce our once native Red Wolf, because they are now on the brink of extension.

It is very interesting to see that the South Carolina DNR don’t truly understand ecosystems or even systems in general. The one thing you have to know about systems are that they are all interconnected. This just shows because due to people forcing out the panthers, and the red wolves we suffer from the problem that we do today. Instead of adapting to the problem we need to mitigate it. We need to go back to where the problem started and that is when the human population rapidly increased.

Works Cited

Connolly, Guy E. “THE EFFECTS OF CONTROL ON COYOTE POPULATIONS:      ANOTHER LOOK.” Digional Commonsdigitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewconte       ntcgi?referer=  &httpsredir=1 &article=1035&context=coyotesw.