Here’s Why There Are So Many Coyotes And Why They Are Spreading So Fast

"For eons, coyotes roamed what is now the western United States, with its wide-open plains. Then came European settlers, who cut down forests for farms and ranches in a steady east-west march. Along the way, they killed large predators such as pumas and wolves to protect livestock and for their own safety.

The predators they obliterated were mortal enemies of the coyote, holding them in check, a new study in the journal ZooKeys says. As mountain lions and wolf packs disappeared from the landscape, coyotes took advantage, starting a wide expansion eastward at the turn of the last century into deforested land that continues today.

Coyotes are newly established in every state and several Canadian provinces and are rapidly moving south of Mexico into Central America, the study released Tuesday says. They have even been spotted by camera traps in Panama. They are in the District’s Rock Creek Park and New York’s Central Park, and they have been known to attack household pets and, on very rare occasions, people. Their rapid expansion into North Carolina in the past decade is a major reason a program to rehabilitate critically endangered red wolves there is on the brink of failure."

Darryl Fears reports for the Washington Post May 22, 2018.

Source: Washington Post, 05/28/2018