The Predator Paradox: Ending the War with Wolves, Bears, Cougars, and Coyotes

179 Pages·2014·1.07 MB·English

by  John Shivik

THE PREDATOR PARADOX
Ending the War with Wolves, Bears,
Cougars, and Coyotes
JOHN A. SHIVIK
BEACON PRESS, BOSTON
For my son, Fox
The prey must have the predator,
just as the predator needs the prey.
One without the other eventually
becomes something less. The wolf
becomes the dog. The deer becomes
a cow. And what does man become?
—LARRY MARCHINGTON
Address to Keepers of the Hunting Spirit Melbourne, Australia
June 1991
CONTENTS
PART I. THE WAR
CHAPTER 1 THE BATTLEFIELD
CHAPTER 2 PREDATORS, PEOPLE, AND PREY
Impacts and Interactions
CHAPTER 3 FOOD
An Inseparable Connection
CHAPTER 4 PERCEPTIONS THAT FUEL THE PARADOX
PART II. DÉTENTE
CHAPTER 5 THE PHENOMENON OF FRIGHT
Disruptive Stimuli
CHAPTER 6 PERSONALITY AND PEER PRESSURE
CHAPTER 7 OF SPIKED DOUGHNUTS AND TURBO-CHARGED
FLAGGING
Testing Aversive Stimuli
CHAPTER 8 CLOSE, BUT NOT TOO CLOSE
Altering Territories
CHAPTER 9 ANIMAL HUSBANDRY
Sometimes It’s About Money, Sometimes It’s Not
CHAPTER 10 THE POWER OF EMOTION AND THE NEED FOR
KNOWLEDGE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
APPENDIX
NOTES
INDEX
PART I
THE WAR
CHAPTER 1
THE BATTLEFIELD
Spanish Fork, Utah’s glass and steel reflected the red morning light, sparkling
like scattered rubies. On the other side of the aircraft, under the rising sun,
stretched a stark, dark contrast of wilderness terrain. The pilot navigated over the
narrow edge: the interface of wilderness and humanity.
The slopes, rocky and rugged, stood too tall and steep to be colonized by
people, but the asphalt and concrete constructions of humanity to the west were
equally challenging to invasion by wild animals. The view from the helicopter
created the illusion that the boundary of wilderness was as razor sharp and
distinct as the heights of the Wasatch.
If one looked closer, however, intrusions became evident; the edge dulled and
blurred. On a ridgeline, ski tracks ran down the face. Figure eights wove in and
out of an avalanche chute. The interlopers had managed to dance down the
virgin snowfield without being swallowed by it.
Where humans broke trails in, animals loped their way out. Coyotes enjoyed
an advantage from the intrusion, as snowmobiles created firm paths through the
depths of Utah’s “greatest snow on earth.” Paw prints on packed powder led to
town, where dispersing canids could find a snack of domestic house cat. Cougars
followed deer that were drawn to the rosebuds of lush suburbs. When the bears
awoke, they would find their way to apple trees on the edge of town. The
human-wildland interface below me wasn’t a razor-edge solid border but a
porous ecotone.
Our machine flew over moose—one, two, three. A mother with her calf—four,
five. Number six, reduced to a mat of hair and jumble of bones, the hide chewed,
processed, and defecated in adjacent scats. This was the reason for our flight:
reports of wolves just outside of the suburban sprawl. We found a carcass,
tracks, and evidence, but no proof strong enough to identify true wolf from feral
dog or hybrid.
The southwest corner of wolf-range in Wyoming was barely one hundred
miles away, only a morning’s walk for a wolf. We did not yet know if it was a
jaunt or sortie, or if wolves had actually reestablished themselves and bred in
Utah, but the line between humans and predators was blurring. It was long past
time to ask the question: Could or would we learn to live with mammalian
predators as close neighbors? Between past and future were a myriad of
considerations.
Beginning in the 1600s, European settlers came to the New World, bringing
their God-given mandate to tame the wilderness. In addition, they carried within
them generations of myth, fear, and violent reaction to predators such as the
wolf. By the turn of the twentieth century, agricultural heavy-handedness had
imposed nearly two hundred years of ecological emptiness, and expanses of the
American West had become devoid of top predators. We had forgotten in a very
deep way what it meant to have among us animals that made their livings eating
other sentient things. By the 1950s, largely through actions of federal trappers,
we had killed off nearly every wolf and grizzly bear in the contiguous United
States and had similarly decimated black bear, cougar, and even coyote
populations in some places.1
Soon after the time of the 1962 publication of Silent Spring, the pendulum of
public opinion swung back, carrying with it a crying Indian, the Endangered
Species Act, and Earth Day. In barely a generation, many North Americans had
developed a sense of environmentalism and a depth of ecology that lacked such
a concept as “varmints” (except perhaps humans). They wanted coyotes, bears,
cougars, and wolves to exist. Even more, they wanted people to stop killing
them.
I was studying wildlife biology as the field grew rapidly and diversified. The
discipline had been utilitarian, hook-and-bullet, strictly about game
management, but all of a sudden it was adding elements of pure and deep
ecology. As a graduate student in the 1990s, I captured, radio-collared, and
followed coyotes because I believed that studying predators would lead us on the
path toward coexistence. An MS, a PhD, and dozens of students and studies
later, I am still sorting out the paradox of desperately wanting to conserve and
increase populations of the animals that we spent so much time and energy
exterminating.
In North America, we think differently about predators than we used to,
especially on the burgeoning, suburbanizing coasts. It puts us humans on a
collision course with remaining and rebounding populations of wolves, bears,
cougars, and coyotes. The rapid sprawl of civilization forces the issue: Is there
anywhere else for predators to go if they can’t live on humanity’s doorstep? Are
there options that would allow us to have carnivores in our kingdom while we
protect our livestock, property, and people? Finally, who is going to jump in the
fray between people and predators and end the feud?
“My God, they’re beautiful,” Lynne Gilbert-Norton gasped, seeing a coyote for
the first time.
The coyote was a few yards away, on the other side of a fence, standing
broadside to us. Its black-furred back faded to tan, then brushed into the red that
lined the outer edges of its pointed ears, which flittered up like furry pyramids
focusing sound. The yellow fires of its eyes did not look away from Lynne in
deference, but peered back, insubordinately, into hers. Black lines, like
Cleopatra’s eyeliner, ran from their corners. Superfluously painted and defiant,
the coyote’s eyes had the duality of menace and allure.
Lynne, of the University of Exeter, had been sent to study something uniquely
American. She acknowledged that coyotes weren’t animals normally studied by
her colleagues and professors. “I’m a psychologist, a Brit,” she said. “I read, but
still don’t feel like I know much about coyotes.”
“Hardly anyone sees a coyote close up like this,” I said. “Even Americans.” I
prodded, “So you’re lucky. The question is, What are you going to do with
them?”
The issue, of course, was much more complicated than my innocent inquiry
suggested. I was asking Lynne to find out how to live with animals that have no
qualms about eating our livestock, our property, even us. How do we outsmart
them on their own playing field? I knew it was going to take more than one or
two biologists or a few grandfathers of conservation biology to find the answers.
It would also require an army of young diverse minds, everyone from foreigners
to farm boys.
More than a hundred coyotes responded to my question. Waves of rapid
ululations and high-pitched barks and yips filled the air. Lynne froze, uncertain.
It sounded like the home team had scored in a nearby football stadium.
Above us stood nature’s castellation, the raw edges of the Bear River Range.
The United States had towering castles and cathedrals as did England, but ours
were geological. Everywhere the new world collided with the ancient. The road
leading to our location weaved between fields, one flooded with water and
white-faced ibis, others yielding young stalks of corn. An inconspicuous blue
and white sign marked state property, “Utah State University Millville Wildlife
Research Center,” alongside a humble plaque reading, “United States
Department of Agriculture, Wildlife Services, Predator Research Facility,”
indicating the collaborative federal pens and buildings sharing the land.
The Predator Research Facility was crammed between rugged desert and high
country mountaintops, between the fantasy of apple pie America and the reality
of the abattoirs of the nearby town of Hyrum, Utah. It was wedged between
university professors’ tentative search for truth and Utah’s religious roots in
dominating nature and demanding that the desert bloom. For Lynne and her
fellow students, it was also the base camp for a journey. She had no idea of the
significance of the research that she’d signed up for, or how a simple little
predator would change her life.
Charismatic song dogs to some, vile varmints to others, the coyote is our most
widespread North American meat eater. Typically considered the second-class
cousin to the wolf, coyotes were confined to the American southwest at the time
of European arrival. As hedgerows, irrigation, crops, and humans displaced the
larger and less compromising wolf, coyotes filled the void. Seizing the
opportunity, they became a continental predator, and are currently found from
Central America to Alaska.2 Today, coyotes are seen, or their effects felt, by
citizens of every state except Hawaii. Drawn by both cat food and cats as food,
they are literally at our kitchen doors.3
Varying in form and habit across their range, coyotes as a species seem
infinitely adaptable, at home in cities, towns, tall mountains, and open deserts.
They tend to be smaller in the southern part of their range, weighing perhaps
twenty pounds as adults, and larger in the north, nearing forty pounds. The
animal known as the eastern coyote is the giant of the species, sometimes
weighing more than fifty pounds, rivaling the size of a well-fed German
shepherd.4
In Native American traditions dating back to the Aztecs, the coyote has been
assigned a variety of personalities and responsibilities. From a creator of the
earth, to mischief maker, to utter fool, he is the Native American Robin
Goodfellow, and his spirit and symbolism are equally protean. Even within the
pantheon of the Aztecs, the coyote had many faces. Tezcatlipoca would
transform himself into a coyote and trot ahead to warn travelers of robbers or
other dangers in front of them. In contrast, Huehuecoyotl, the Old Coyote, was a
nefarious mischief-maker.5
Farther to the north, Native American tribes had similar impressions of the