Edmonton Journal Digital

The fact that two coyotes attacked and killed 19-year-old Taylor Mitchell in Cape Breton Highlands National Park on Tuesday was strange for two reasons, say experts: Coyote attacks on humans are very rare — and two animals attacking together, even more so.

BRIAN GAVRILOFF, THE JOURNAL, FILE

A coyote likely larger than this western variety killed a woman in Nova Scotia.

“There are literally thousands of these animals between Windsor, (Ont.) and St. John (N.L.),”said Brad White, a coyote expert at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., “and I don’t know another incident like this. It’s a very exceptional thing.”

While coyotes have been known to kill pets and small livestock, the animals that attacked Mitchell were probably coyote-wolf hybrids, White said.

Wolves are more likely to hunt in packs and are less picky about what they prey on, White explained. But the intermingling in the early 1900s between the normally solitary coyote and the wolf might explain the attack on Mitchell. “A human could look like prey to them — but still, I’ve never heard of an eastern coyote attacking a human.”

Meanwhile, a biologist with the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources said he’s seen no reason to suspect the animals were coyote-wolf crosses. Don Anderson noted there are no wolves in Nova Scotia or New Brunswick. “We do have a larger coyote that’s bigger than the western version,” he said. “It does travel in groups, as opposed to the western, which tends to travel alone.

“I can’t say that there aren’t some out there that are hybrids with dogs, or wolves, for that matter, but I don’t think the whole population is based on that,” he said.

White said the odds are also against the two coyotes having rabies. “Two diseased animals attacking would be unlikely, because it’s unlikely the progression of something like rabies, which is a lethal disease, would be parallel in two animals,” he said. “Usually, they’d be in different stages.”

Edmonton Journal Digital

The Moose/Wolf Dynamic - washingtonpost.com

A prey and predator relationship on Isle Royale

SOURCE: Isle Royale Wolf/Moose Study | GRAPHIC: By Patterson Clark, The Washington Post - July 21, 2008

The Moose/Wolf Dynamic - washingtonpost.com

Pressure to Kill Wolves Mounting Across the Western USA

 

Twelve years after reintroducing gray wolves to the Northern Rockies, the federal government has announced a plan that allows many of these same wolves and their offspring to be killed.

Farther south, New Mexico Governor and presidential candidate Bill Richardson Friday called for revision of state and federal wolf operating procedures after an endangered Mexican gray wolf was killed last week by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The government wants to remove the wolves from the endangered species list in late 2007 or early 2008, a move that conservation groups oppose. The new proposal allows wolves in the Northern Rockies to be killed before they are formally delisted.

Pressure to Kill Wolves Mounting Across the Western USA