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 ooks like coyotes have been feeding here," Jack Spencer says,
surveying the half-eaten remains of a cow carcass. "Look at all
those tracks."
Spencer backs the four-wheeler out of the hilltop grove of trees
and drives along the perimeter until he spots a 3 inch flag warning
that a lethal dose of cyanide is near. Several feet away, two
meat-scented swabs stick out about 2 inches from the ground.
The M-44s, or "kí yot gitters" according to Spencer, are spring
loaded to disperse a small cloud of cyanide when something tugs
on the bait.
 | | Above: Dead coyotes often become bait for other scavengers in the
food chain. Top: Some ranchers hang dead coyotes as a warning for others
to stay away.
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"That one's been pulled," he says, searching the area for a dead
animal. "See how the pin in the middle is pushed up?"
Spencer walks down the hill a hundred yards and yells, "Over
here!" The Oregon Wildlife Services agent lifts the coyote’s
lifeless jowl, revealing a few granules of the pink cyanide that
killed the female.
Spencer returns to the M-44, carefully unscrews the swab and
resets the device with a new plastic case of cyanide. Grasping
the base of the gitter in his left hand, he tugs on the swab
to show how it works. With a seemingly innocent "poof," the M-44
releases 0.85 milligrams of noxious pink crystals into the air.
"It just sprays up into their mouth, and that's it," he says
nonchalantly.
When Europeans first landed on the East Coast, coyotes ranged
primarily between the Cascades and Rocky Mountains from Mexico
to Canada. As settlers moved west they tqamed the wild land for
their livestock, killing most of the bears, mountain lions and
wolves. With little competition for small prey, opportunistic
coyotes spread throughout the entire continent. In 1914, under
pressure from ranchers, Congress first appropriated funds for predator control. Armed with an extremely lethal poison called Compound 1080, agents and ranchers
injected the odorless and tasteless chemical into carcasses,
killing any animal, including coyotes, that ate the meat. The
compound was banned in the United States in 1972 because of several
accidental human deaths, along with the threat it posed to endangered
species such as the bald eagle.
 | | A steel leg hold trap used to hunt coyotes.
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Under pressure from the livestock
industry in 1985, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) allowed
experimental use of 1080 in Livestock Protection Collars, which
are currently being used in nine states.
Coyotes now thrive in every North American habitat, including
cities and suburban neighborhoods. Bob Crabtree, a Yellowstone
biologist who has been studying coyote behavior for 14 years,
believes that the random killing of coyotes, along with decreased
competition from larger predators such as bears and mountain
lions, has contributed to an extreme population boom. "There
is little, if any, scientific basis for control programs that
indiscriminately target adult coyotes," says Crabtree.
 | | Trappers like Spencer are legally required to post signs warning of lethal compounds or traps in the area.
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Nature abhors a vacuum, and coyotes are living proof. While outright
killing can temporarily reduce the population, other coyotes
will soon fill the gap by shifting their territorial boundaries.
Additionally, when a pack member dies, females begin reproducing
at younger ages and giving birth to larger and healthier litters.
In fact, Crabtree found that coyotes naturally regulate their
numbers by producing fewer pups as the population reaches the
limit that the territory can support.
Yet Wildlife Services, formerly known as Animal Damage Control,
still resorts to primarily lethal methods of control and questions
Crabtree’s conclusions. In 1997 aerial gunners killed about 30,000
coyotes in the rural open range of the West using small planes
and helicopters. Agency employees killed another 18,000 coyotes
and 1,300 other predators with cyanide loaded M-44s, which essentially
asphyxiate an animal. They use neck and body snares that tighten
as the animal struggles, steel and rubber-lined leg hold traps
and old fashioned calling and shooting. A few thousand are also
killed by denning, a method of suffocating pups in their den
by dropping burning cases of sodium nitrate into the hole.
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