Coyote-human coexistence urged as animals migrate [to San Francisco's Golden Gate Park]

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | June 2, 2012 | Peter Fimrite

[WilliamIII]

The revelation, along with photographic proof, that at least three coyote puppies were recently born in Golden Gate Park raises some interesting questions about the future of the park - namely, how much time before roving packs of yipping wild predators drive humans and their decidedly un-wily pets out?

That, at least, is what the alarmists are asking, and the answer, according to the experts, is "never." The presence of coyotes in the city is good for the ecosystem, city officials and wildlife experts said, even if a few feral cats go missing.

"It is important that people recognize that coyotes are part of our ecosystem and that they have intrinsic value and ecological value," said Camilla Fox, the executive director of Project Coyote, a Larkspur nonprofit that consults with cities, ranchers and other groups on ways to live with coyotes without resorting to bullets, traps and poison.

[Eagles6]

Exactly.

[Salamander]

Strychnine bait is indiscriminate.

It kills *everything* and we don’t want that.

[the neighbors’ cats and dogs, scavenging buzzards, eagles and hawks, for example]

The good ol’ boys just waited at the bottom of the ridges until the packs came down to feed on the calves and lambs.

The DNR would hang you for shooting them no matter what they did until the farmers started losing *huge* numbers of livestock.

The ‘yotes would sit by a calving cow and literally eat the calf as it was being born.

That’s when “unofficial coyote season” opened.

My dad, for the only time in his whole life, went up the ridge to check his deer feeder and a pack of them came after him.

He had to walk backwards down a rocky, steep ridge, never losing eye contact, until he got to his truck and rifle.

As soon as they saw the rifle, they hauled ass.

*Very* smart, unafraid of humans and big; a dangerous combination.

Not long after dad’s ordeal, they legalized shooting them.

Once is a *great* while, I’ll see one flattened on the interstate.
[the first one I saw, I thought it was somebody GSD dead, that’s how big they are, here]

The ridges are silent, now.

Good.

My goats no longer cringe in fear every night under the dusk to dawn light.
They sleep peacefully in their barn.

My Winchester 30.30 lever action will knock them down because it’s been my preferred deer hunting rifle practically forever.

You know me well enough to know I love *all* animals and go out of my way to not harm them.

But the simple fact is, I love *my* animals more.

[Jeff Chandler]

.223? A good caliber for coyotes.

[Carry_Okie]

Strychnine bait is indiscriminate.

Yes, but that IS how it was done.

The DNR would hang you for shooting them no matter what they did until the farmers started losing *huge* numbers of livestock.

Check out the experience of cattle ranchers in Idaho and Montana. Their losses to wolves now stand at about 30% when weight loss, spontaneous abortions, and kills are added up. A recent study of killed wolves showed that 75% of their diet by weight was cattle.

It took that much for the DNR to permit a hunt, one that after its first year has been shown to be WAY inadequate for two reasons: first, they were sandbagging the numbers; there are at least twice as many wolves as by official counts (I'm not speculating; I citing people who know more about game counts than anybody on this forum could contemplate). Second, they set the hunt to less than half of that under-counted population and the hunters didn't even get that many. The procedures were bureaucratic as hell.

The ‘yotes would sit by a calving cow and literally eat the calf as it was being born.

Wolves will eat the unborn calf right out of an elk and leave the mother to die.

The ridges are silent, now. Good.

Yup.

My Winchester 30.30 lever action will knock them down because it’s been my preferred deer hunting rifle practically forever.

I have a neighbor who uses the same gun in .357. Keeps the ammo bill a bit lower. Around here, you never get a shot longer than 100 yards anyway. Too steep, too many trees.

You know me well enough to know I love *all* animals and go out of my way to not harm them.

But the simple fact is, I love *my* animals more.

As it should be.

Just think of how it lowers the cost of paint.

[Salamander]

There once was a time that those pelts would’ve been worth a fortune in the fur trade.

[and we load our own ammo...cost isn’t really a factor]

:)

They finally gave us a black bear season in W.MD.

They had a limit of *30* bears and 200 hunters.
They figured it would go on for days until the 30 bear limit was reached.

The hunt didn’t even last 45 minutes.

If there’s many hundreds of thousands of nearly impassable acres and only 200 hunters, how many freaking bears are actually *here* that 30 of them get capped in less than an hour?

[eartrumpet]

“Wonder if they have a catalog?”

Certainly.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/081185115X/ref=sib_dp_pt/185-4843905-2042113#reader-link

[TigersEye]

Meanwhile, the soil needs the blood, guts, and bones the dogs are eating. The soil makes the raw material for his sheep. It's a losing game.

Are Anatolians a special breed of dog that doesn't poop?

[bill1952]

Bawahahaha! Good Lord, we need to encourage them to accept this, along with all kinds of other wild predators, like bears & wolves.
Its just not fair to hunt them or shoot them.

In Fact, I think Jim should hold a FR fundraiser to send hundreds of wild animals to SF and loose them in the parks.
Who do those mangy humans think that they are anyway, intruding on the animal's space like that!

I'm serious. I may be crazy, but I'm dead serious!
Quid pro quo, sauce for the goose, and all that...

[bill1952]

The coyotes were here before we were, so I’m no...

LOL - in fact ROTFL!

Bears were there before you also ...

[Darnright]

>If there’s many hundreds of thousands of nearly impassable acres and only 200 hunters, how many freaking bears are actually *here* that 30 of them get capped in less than an hour?<

I don’t want to know. I was in town yesterday helping my daughter. My neighbor called, “Are you home? A bear just ran across our front yard toward your place.”. I called my husband, who was on his way into town. He turned around and high-tailed it back home. He never did see the bear, thank goodness.

We saw tracks in the snow up above our house a couple of years ago, but haven’t seen a bear in the 15 years we’ve been here.

[Carry_Okie]

Are Anatolians a special breed of dog that doesn't poop?

Have you ever heard of the "biological pyramid"? There's a reason it's narrower at the top, each level at approximately 1/6 of the one below. Really, considering the amount of fertilizer you get out of the animal as opposed to the feces of the animal that eats it... well,

If you'd like, I can post photographic evidence of the difference between animal waste and blood meal on grass production, or I could tell you that the difference is astonishing. I just did a factorial experiment on exactly that comparison this year.

[Carry_Okie]

There once was a time that those pelts would’ve been worth a fortune in the fur trade.

All it would take is a President who is worth his salary and it could be so again. Canine fur makes a very warm coat.

[TigersEye]

Most enrichment of the soil comes from decaying vegetable matter.

[Carry_Okie]

If there’s many hundreds of thousands of nearly impassable acres and only 200 hunters, how many freaking bears are actually *here* that 30 of them get capped in less than an hour?

Enough to assure that the land is incapable of supporting the people in a crisis and a dangerous place to which to flee.

[Jeff Chandler]

a special breed of dog that doesn't poop

and doesn't shed, and is trained to fetch beer from the fridge . . .

Just making my wish list.

[TigersEye]

LOL

[Carry_Okie]

Most enrichment of the soil comes from decaying vegetable matter.

Actually, decayed roots to be precise, and particularly perennial grasses. By comparison, detritus is overrated. The problem here is mineral depletion, not nitrogen. The blood meal has iron in a particularly available form in addition to the nitrogen.

When I applied blood meal to a patch of small-flowered needle grass (Stipa lepida) at the rate of 50#/1000sft, vegetative productivity of those grasses increased 600%. Adjacent to that spot, about 12' away, I applied animal waste. In this case, it was a particularly appropriate animal waste, used cat litter, exactly analogous to the product of said Anatolian shepherd dogs and in a higher concentration of nitrogen than the blood meal. Vegetative productivity in that latter spot only doubled, if that. Worse, forb production in the blood meal area was ten times that in the cat litter area. Ungulates eat more forbs than grasses, so this is particularly important in that regard.

Considering the loss of progressing that one step up the pyramid and that if I was grazing it I would also get the waste products of the herbivore, feeding predators with herbivores and then using the waste as fertilizer is terrible soil stewardship. Your dog poop analogy isn't as good as BS... or do I need to go into the differences in intestinal microflora?

[Mears]

They are all over my daughter’s neighborhood in a thickly settled western suburb of Boston.

[ari-freedom]

“Just what San Francisco needs. A thriving population of pariah dogs. Feral canids running loose in any city inevitably become a major problem, as these “experts” will soon experience for themselves. “

They would clean up San Francisco...

[TigersEye]

Pound per pound animal matter is unquestionably richer than vegetable matter. But when you compare how many pounds per acre per year the land receives of animal matter to pounds per year of vegetable matter there isn't even much point in counting the animal matter.

BS would essentially be vegetable matter for that matter.