This commentary is by Jane Fitzwilliam of Putney, who leads the Vermont Coyote Coexistence Coalition.
A common refrain that we hear from the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department commissioner is “follow the science,” yet Fish & Wildlife ignores science when it doesn’t fit their political agenda. That kind of duplicitous talk doesn’t foster public trust.
The open hunting season on coyotes is just one example of a Fish & Wildlife policy that is not grounded in science. In Vermont, it’s perfectly legal to leave a pile of carcasses to bait coyotes and kill them. In this idyllic Green Mountain State, coyotes can be killed in any manner, day or night, 365 days a year. And sometimes, if you’re a dog in Vermont, you will get killed, too.
This past April, an 11-year old German shepherd dog was attracted to a bait pile that included pig and cow carcasses on a farm in Tunbridge. The farm manager shot and killed the dog, likely suspecting the dog was a coyote. The dog’s owner found the dog on the rotting bait pile four days later.
In this case, the farm manager was charged with animal cruelty. But in the case of coyotes that are drawn to bait piles and mercilessly slaughtered, it’s business as usual.
Every year, coyote pups are left orphaned when their parents are killed simply for being a coyote. Their lifeless bodies are nailed to trees and strung from poles, symbolizing the dark underbelly of some Vermonters’ attitudes toward these social and intelligent apex predators.
Similar to the predator hatred that we see out West with wolves, Vermont’s Eastern coyotes, who share wolf DNA, are often killed on-site for no good reason.
To make matters worse, this relentless persecution of coyotes is at odds with science. Even Fish & Wildlife acknowledges the futility of killing coyotes on its website: “Where significant reductions in coyote numbers are locally achieved, the missing animals are soon replaced with young coyotes moving in from other locations, so any local population reduction is only short-term. Coyotes can increase their reproductive rates in response to hunting, so populations rebound quickly from efforts to control their numbers directly by hunting or trapping.”
That beckons our question again to the commissioner (that he’s previously refused to answer): Why is Fish & Wildlife not following its own science?
At Vermont Coyote Coexistence Coalition, we are interested in a compromise with Fish & Wildlife. We submitted a petition to the department, recommending a regulated coyote-hunting season that takes pup rearing into consideration. A regulated season would still allow people to kill a coyote in defense of a person or property.
Vermont Coyote Coexistence Coalition, along with Protect Our Wildlife and other nonprofits, successfully banned coyote-killing contests in 2018 — without any help from Fish & Wildlife, by the way. There is also a bit of recent good news in that hunting coyotes with hounds will be temporarily suspended starting this month as Fish & Wildlife considers the future of coyote hounding and how to regulate it.
Since hounds “can’t read posted signs” — as the hounders say — they cross lines onto private property, roads, public lands, and other areas where they aren’t wanted, while in pursuit of their prey. The hounds put people, domestic animals and personal property at risk.
A woman who was out cycling with her dog last year in Fairlee, Vermont, experienced a horrifying encounter when a pack of hounds that were in pursuit of a coyote viciously attacked her dog. Landowners in Craftsbury, Vermont, have had property damaged by hounds in pursuit of coyotes. This plays out over and over again across Vermont and the public has had enough.
It’s time that both the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department and the all-powerful Fish & Wildlife Board consider the interests and safety of the public as well as the welfare of coyotes and adopt a 21st-century policy as it relates to coyote hunting.
