Coyotes are native to the southwestern U.S. and have expanded their range rapidly in the last 100 years. A recent study examines patterns of coyote abundance.
“Now they're found basically throughout all of North America. ... And so, our main goal was to figure out – what are the environmental and human-led factors driving this expansion?”
Austin Green, one of the study’s authors, is an ecologist for Sageland Collaborative and an associate instructor at the University of Utah. He said the data for this study came from Snapshot USA, a network of camera traps across the contiguous United States.
“From that data, we can look at long-term nationwide trends in wildlife populations,” Green said.
What they found was that, in states and counties where coyote hunting is allowed, coyotes are actually more abundant.
"There's a number of potential reasons for why we are seeing this kind of weird, what we call “coyote math,” where two minus one equals three,” Green said.
It does seem to be a pretty consistent trend. However, Green said, that where hunting pressures exist, coyote populations are high.
In Utah, hunting coyotes is encouraged to protect the mule deer population. The Division of Wildlife Resources offers a $50 bounty for each coyote killed. This month, that bounty was increased to $100 in areas classified as crucial mule deer habitat.
Research suggests, however, that killing coyotes is not the answer.
“There was no evidence across our model or across other investigations that unregulated coyote hunting is a legitimate population control measure," Green said.
