Our Neighbour - the coywolf

Natural Focus                                        John Belbin

If you missed the recent screening of David Suzuki’s The Nature of Things called Meet the Coywolf”. Make sure that you check it out soon – you will be astounded. It is available on the CBC web site at link

  Here is a brand new top predator that is living among us so successfully that most people do not even know it is there.
   This program illustrates with beautiful and unique photography how the new version of the coyote, with some characteristics of wolves, is now a normal resident of our towns and cities on a daily basis.   

  It shows how this large carnivore is now living with humans in such a way as to be virtually invisible to most people as they go about their normal business.
 Virtually all the time there is little conflict or threat of any kind. It simply takes advantage of the benefits of living close to man. 
  Astoundingly they estimate that about 2000 coywolves are permanently resident in downtown Toronto, another 2000 in downtown Chicago. 
  We share our parks, our streets and even our backyards with these wild animals with only a very rare problem ever arising. Probably much of that has to do with the fact that most people don’t even know they are there. Much of the filming takes place in downtown Toronto and another large section was filmed in Cape Breton.

  It was in Cape Breton, of course that the coywolf first came to the public’s attention as a result of the first ever fatal attack on a human by one of these animals. As they clearly live closely with us throughout all of eastern North America that shows just how unusual and non-typical that incident was.   Without a doubt that particular animal had lost its natural fear of humans, probably because someone had been feeding it and it grew to associate humans with food. 
  Any large animal can become dangerous under those circumstances, especially if it’s other food sources have been removed or depleted. In cities and towns there are far more sources of food for them to draw on than in the comparative barrens of the Cape Breton highlands.

  Coywolves are neither western coyotes (the ones you see in western movies) nor eastern wolves. They are a hybrid that is the product of wolves and coyotes interbreeding. That itself is remarkable as wolves normally kill coyotes. However wolves were exterminated in Eastern North America as a product of land clearing and development. 
  A very few hung on in Algonquin Park in Ontario and became severely in-bred. They began to look on the local coyotes as potential mates instead of prey and a new hybrid was born. 
  The product of two very intelligent animals, the new creature is extremely bright and opportunistic. It learned to expand from the original park area by following our railway lines, which is how it has managed to penetrate into our largest cities without being seen.

  There is some truly remarkable photography in this documentary by Susan Flemming. There are night scenes with coywolves moving about the streets of the city quite openly and with no-one paying them any attention. Without a doubt most people would assume that they are merely a large dog roaming about – they act much the same. 
  There is a scene where a young woman goes to exercise her dog in a cemetery and nearby park. A coywolf appears and plays tag round the headstones with her dog while she watches. 

  Another scene shows a coywolf that has a den just a few feet away from a school as it watches the children play. These animals are incredibly curious. Another has a large den right next to a running trail through a park used by hundreds of people each day, none of whom even know that it is there.     
  They have become the natural ghosts of our towns. Coywolves are seen trotting behind people as they jog through the streets for exercise, no problems and no awareness on any-body’s part are noted.

Coywolves have become the main predator on Canada geese that now overrun our parks and green spaces. 

  This bird has gone from needing protection to becoming a major environmental menace in just a few generations. Without the coywolf we would probably be inundated with these noisy, aggressive and messy birds. The coywolf is also the major predator of all rodents, things that become major pests in all our communities if they are not controlled. They will also, of course, eat the occasional stray cat, which is probably also a benefit to the environment as a whole.

  Coyotes and coywolves are living with us and are something we can easily live with. After seeing this film you begin to think that all of us have seen these animals, we just didn’t realize it. Just ensure that you do not feed them and that they maintain their natural fear of us. We will all get along together to our mutual benefit. (Pics submitted)