North Carolina Nights video shows similarity of red wolves & coyotes

This video was produced by Jeff Mittlestadt, a journalism graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was published yesterday on Reese News. Jeff’s thesis work focuses on red wolves, and in this video he shows wild canids active at night, and asks: Are these red wolves or coyotes? The question gets to the issue of whether coyote hunters would be able to satisfactorily distinguish between common coyotes and globally imperiled red wolves if the state allows them to shoot coyotes at night, statewide, with no bag limit and no permit required. Listen to local hunters from Hyde County, within the red wolf recovery area, discuss whether or not they shoot coyotes now and why or why not.

Do you think nighttime coyote hunting ought to be legal in North Carolina? Tell the state Wildlife Resources Commission whether you agree or disagree with their proposal to allow it. Read proposal W1 on this page, then click on the online form to submit your comments. The comment period is open until April 16 — just four more days. (If you are not a NC resident, you can still comment, just select your state in question-6, and scroll past all the NC counties for question-7 to select “out of state” at the very bottom.)

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Nighttime coyote hunting could harm federally-endangered red wolves

A shorter version of this story was published in the Charlotte Observer Sci-Tech pages on April 9, 2012. If you would like to submit comments to the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission about their proposal to allow the nighttime hunting of coyotes then please visit this page and click the online form link for proposal W1. The comment period is open until April 16, 2012.

Captive male red wolf. Photo courtesy of Ryan Nordsven/USFWS

Since 1993 it’s been legal to shoot coyotes during daylight hours throughout North Carolina, but a new rule proposed by the Wildlife Resources Commission would expand statewide coyote hunting opportunities to include nighttime. The new rule would allow the use of artificial lights to blind coyotes after dark where hunting is currently legal. There would be no season, no bag limit, and no permit required.

Opponents to the rule say it unnecessarily places federally-listed red wolves at risk of being shot by mistake because they appear physically similar to coyotes. Red wolves range in weight from 55 -75 pounds while coyotes are usually 35 to 40 pounds, according to the Red Wolf Recovery Program Coordinator David Rabon.

“We have suffered a number of problems during daylight hours with mistaken identity, and hunting at night is only going to add to that,” Rabon said. On average, six to eight red wolves are killed each year in cases where the shooter believed they were taking a coyote but instead shot a red wolf. Red wolves are most active at night.

Because coyotes and red wolves will hybridize under certain conditions, the Fish and Wildlife Service has sterilized coyotes in the five-county red wolf recovery area since about 2000 to prevent interspecies breeding. Rabon said the program is currently monitoring about 40 sterilized coyotes in Dare, Hyde, Tyrrell, Washington and Beaufort counties. These coyotes and all known red wolves wear radio collars, which might add to the identity confusion. Rabon fears the rule change would harm his program’s hybridization management if sterilized coyotes are shot, and he questions what WRC is trying to achieve in terms of wildlife management.

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More hybrid lovin’: coywolves, wolves and coyotes…

Coywolves. (c) Jon G. Way

Is it a wolf? No.

A coyote? No.

A mixture of the two? Oh, yes.

Northeastern wild canids have been leading biologists on a wild goose chase recently, as science scrambles to catch up with just what, exactly, Mother Nature has been cooking up in Massachusetts. Reports of extra large eastern coyotes have been rolling in for decades, but a certain subset of these animals has really caught people’s attention. Dubbed “coywolves,” they appear to be a cross between wolves and coyotes. Not only do they fall in between in size, but they have retained the urban-tolerance of coyotes while adding in the social pack behavior of wolves. And yes, they have added white-tailed deer to their dinner menus, something that most coyotes are not large or strong enough to take down.

A recent paper in the Northeastern Naturalist set out to sort out the “canis soup” that’s been stewing in the northeast by using mitochondrial DNA analyses to figure out what genes coywolves carry, and how closely they are related to other known canids. {1}

Now, where this gets really confusing is how the authors define a wolf. For the most part, we tend to think of just two species of wolves in North America: red wolves of the East, Canis rufus (and only in North Carolina now), and gray wolves of the West, Canis lupus. But, there is a point of contention over “eastern wolves.” Until recently, this wolf of southeastern Quebec was classified as a sub-species of gray wolf, termed Canis lupus lycaon. But recent DNA evidence points toward it actually not being a gray wolf at all… in fact, it falls out most closely related to Canis rufus. This may seem an esoteric point, but it is hugely important, so hold on to this thought. As such, several biologists have called for reclassifying both the red wolf and the eastern wolf as Canis lycaon. The jury is still out on this, as there are a lot of politics to consider with such a move, but just hold on to the fact that eastern wolves are not gray wolves, and are evolutionarily in a different species group.

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