Certainly one with any knowledge of what goes on in Maine and any hint of the facts of coyote and wolf biological science would automatically assume that a recent letter to the editor in the Bangor Daily News is a joke. Unfortunately it’s not.

Aside from the fact that just about everything in that letter is not factual, claims made by the writer cannot be scientifically substantiated. Most claims are merely perpetuated myths that have existed for decades or longer.

The writer speaks of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife’s coyote policy. What policy is he referring to? One that he made up in his own mind? The only policy MDIFW has toward coyotes is that they have a liberal hunting season on them. Aside from that, even a mandate from the Maine Legislature to come up with a bona fide predator management plan has gone by with little action.

I chuckled though at this writer’s comments about a nationwide conspiracy to kill all coyotes.

Despite a nationwide attempt to annihilate an important predator, there are more coyotes in North America than there were in the 19th century.

The writer also claims that no matter how many coyotes get killed they will automatically do a numbers count and make a few adjustments to their reproductive system and birth more pups than got killed the previous year. Before anyone should go spewing this poor information in a public forum, they should at least have the common decency to provide uninformed readers where they can verify the claims.

Unfortunately, for those readers who really don’t know what’s going on and should read this misinformation, it actually can do more harm for all wildlife should they decide to accept this as fact. Making claims that all hunters, trappers and those at the MDIFW want to do is destroy every coyote in the state is laughable. The writer is a ball of contradiction, first saying that no matter what anyone has ever done through history to eradicate us from coyotes, nothing has worked. As a matter of fact, the writer claims there are more coyotes in North America now than ever before. How can we attempt to kill all the coyotes and now have more than ever before coming out of one corner of his mouth while out of the other corner we hear fear mongering that MDIFW’s policy, along with hunters and trappers are going to wipe out the coyote population.

And lastly, the writer alludes to the fact that we should let things become “natural”.

If we just left them alone they naturally would self-regulate.

We hear this garbage incessantly. One of the major problems with this Disneyesque philosophy is that how they intend to make it work is to get rid of man, like somehow man is not a natural species in the larger scheme of things.

The writer not only suggests we should just simply let the coyote “self-regulate” but that we should “allow” the gray wolf to repopulate the state. Is there somebody not allowing this to happen? Surely the writer wouldn’t be suggesting that we import some wolves? My, that wouldn’t at all be “natural” now would it?

There is no way that the MDIFW is going to create a policy that is geared toward the eradication of coyotes. And even if they and all the hunters and trappers statewide wanted to do that, as the writer suggests, it’s for all intent and purposes impossible to do. What knowledgeable and concerned outdoor sportsmen are hoping to accomplish as part of an overall plan to restore severely diminished white tail deer populations, is go to areas hardest hit by severe winters and reduced habit and reduce predator populations before we end up with non sustainable deer herds.

It would be just as irresponsible and a “wrong Maine coyote policy” to allow for the destruction of one species while “allowing” another to self-regulate as it would be to promote for the eradication of coyotes from the Maine woods.

Tom Remington

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