Other than dogs (Canis familiaris), coyotes (Canis latrans) are the closest living relatives of gray wolves (Canis lupus). But don’t expect a friendly family reunion should coyotes and gray wolves encounter each other in the wild. Wolves frequently kill coyotes, especially when coyotes are trying to scavenge at a wolf kill site. That may seem cruel, evil, and inhumane until you remember what early European settlers in Iowa did when they encountered wolves. Frequently, the wolves ended up dead.
Both wolves and coyotes were native species in Iowa when settlement by Europeans began in the early 1800s. And both species, in the words of James J. Dinsmore, author of A Country so Full of Game, were “greatly persecuted.” Wolves were eliminated from the state by the mid to late 1800s. Coyote populations were low in Iowa by the early 1900s but have since rebounded. Coyotes are now common throughout the state.
Why is the first reaction of humans to large predators such as wolves and coyotes often to kill them? The answer, in part, is the same reason wolves kill coyotes. Coyotes compete with wolves for resources, and large predators compete with us for resources. A large predator might kill a deer that would otherwise feed our family. They might kill a lamb or some chickens that we were raising. There is also a fear factor—the thought that they might attack us, our children, or our pets. Such reasons lead many humans to vilify large predators. To consider them to be evil and to justify killing them whenever possible. Currently, there is a continuous open season for killing coyotes in Iowa, with hunting legally allowed year-round and trapping allowed in the fall and winter.
Project Coyote offers a guide for coyote-friendly communities, promoting peaceful coexistence and conflict prevention.
Predators are a natural and essential part of any ecosystem. An inescapable fact about ecosystems is that it’s never possible to change just one thing. It’s not possible to just remove the predators. Human activities that remove predators from ecosystems always have additional unintended consequences. Eliminating coyote-killing gray wolves from Iowa and from the entire eastern United States allowed coyotes to become more numerous and to expand their range into eastern states where they are now common. When the opportunity arises, coyotes kill smaller predators, like raccoons and opossums, so killing coyotes leads to more raccoons and opossums.
I talked to a pheasant hunter once who told me he “killed coyotes every chance he got” because they killed pheasants. The problem with that rationale is that raccoons and opossums are very effective nest predators of ground-nesting birds such as pheasants. Fewer coyotes means more raccoons and opossums, and fewer successful pheasant nests. Not killing coyotes might lead to more pheasants than killing coyotes. You never change just one thing in an ecosystem.
Large predators can, of course, be dangerous and can kill humans. Such events are tragic but are also exceedingly rare. In the entire recorded history of the United States and Canada, there are two documented human fatalities due to coyotes. Many more people (about 70) are killed by bee or wasp stings each year. Somewhere around 100 humans have been killed by large predators in North America during the last century. By comparison, 400 humans are killed every year in deer and motor vehicle accidents in North America. Predators are simply trying to do the same thing we’re trying to do—feed ourselves and our families.
Most humans are themselves predators, either directly (raising animals for food or hunting) or indirectly (paying other people to kill animals for you), because most of us eat other animals. Perhaps we have more in common with coyotes than it appears at first glance. If we don’t consider ourselves to be evil, maybe coyotes aren’t evil either.
For further reading on the ecological importance and resilience of coyote, Iowa Natives recommends Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History by Dan Flores.
"For the 15,000 years since we humans have been in North America, coyotes have always been capable of living among us. Something about our lifestyle has always drawn coyotes to human camps, villages, and cities. That something is ecology at its simplest, even if it makes us squirm a bit. A coyote's primary prey happens to be our close fellow travelers, the mice and rats that flourish around and among us in profusion. . . . The urban coyote is not a new thing."