Snaring scapegoats

Last year, lawmakers took up two bills regarding Maine’s coyote snaring program – one to eliminate it, the other to expand it. Based upon the belief that the state’s relatively uncontrolled coyote population is devastating its deer herds, the first bill was rejected, the second passed and the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife was instructed to develop recommendations to that end.

IF&W has done just that and the recommendations now are working their way through the legislative approval process.

It is a fairly modest, balanced plan that expands snaring as it increases the training required to become a certified snarer and its acceptance by lawmakers seems assured.

Also assured is that the conflict those two bills exposed – the degree to which humans should intervene in the struggle between predator and prey – is not resolved. If the loud public reaction to IF&W’s recent round of annual information meetings for prospective snarers and to details of the expansion is as strong a clue as loud public reaction usually is, the next Legislature will be right back where the current one began.

This is not merely one more argument between hunters and anti-hunters. In fact, a great many hunters are utterly opposed to snaring – the inhumane aspects of strangling a coyote to death in a wire noose with no measurable benefit to deer is to them a black eye their sport does not need.

It is a position backed up by the best science available on the subject. Maine’s coyote population is estimated at 15,000, the current snaring program kills from 300 to 350 a year, and a 1995 study found that an annual removal of 70 percent (more than 10,000) would be needed to truly suppress this most adaptable and resilient of creatures. If long-running, extensive and well-funded coyote eradication programs in Western states have failed to make a dent, it is highly unlikely Maine will make even a scratch with the $20,000 it devotes to its effort.

The best chance snaring has to benefit deer is with highly targeted efforts aimed at deeryards in Washington and Aroostook counties, where the deer population struggles. Wildlife experts agree, however, that eliminating coyotes from one specific area would be a short-lived success. Coyotes are highly mobile and famously opportunistic;

in a year, two at best, the coyote-free deeryard would be repopulated. The very existence of coyotes in Maine is evidence of their mobility and opportunism: They were first sighted here in 1936, taking quick and full advantage of the predator gap created by the elimination, at human hands, of the wolf.

There is, in fact, reason to believe that the coyote is being made the scapegoat for Maine’s deer problem. For northern Maine, where the problem is too few deer, its location at the fringe of the deer’s natural range is exacerbated by the loss of wintering habitat caused by clear-cutting. For southern Maine, where there are too many deer, habitat has been lost to encroaching development. Forest practices and sprawl – two more unresolved issues for the next Legislature.