DENVER–A recent Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s (CPW) stakeholder report shows a wide gap between agriculture producers and animal welfare activists when it comes to management of coyotes.
The stakeholder report, released in early December, summarizes four months of CPW meetings with rural interests, such as ranchers and sportsman, along with animal welfare and environmental activists. CPW held these meetings to explore potential changes to current furbearing animal management.
While the two sides found common ground on management strategies of most other animals, coyotes were the one species the groups could not compromise over.
Ranchers, sportsmen, and rural landowners expressed the constant and direct threat of coyotes for their livestock. Because coyotes are exceptionally adaptive predators, maneuvering fences and entering blocked off areas, livestock producers say their calves, lambs, guard dogs and farm cats have been killed regularly by coyotes.
Household pets are also easy prey for coyotes. Pets can contract diseases from the animal, some that can be transmitted to humans such as rabies, leptospirosis, or tularemia.
Currently, coyote harvesting is allowed year-round in Colorado as a game-classified species. Animal activists advocate for harvesting restrictions and seasonal protections for the species.
While populations are not declining, activist groups identified coyotes as a high priority species for management change
“They feel strongly that this lack of constraint on harvest devalues furbearer lives and encourages the pursuit and killing of these animals,” the report reads.
Rick Enstrom, a former Colorado State Wildlife Commissioner, says there is nothing new about this line of argument from environmentalists. “This is a decades old conflict and with the fur market for hunting and trapping coyotes being in decline as of late there’s no pressure on these populations because that’s how they’re primarily controlled.”
Enstrom points to agenda-driven non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and anti-agriculture rhetoric promoted on college campuses.
“It’s making agriculture untenable and therefore we have this rub between the urban environmentalists and rural America that drive the food chain,” Enstrom told Complete Colorado, “Rural Colorado pays for and supports wildlife conservation and urban Colorado provides the static.”
Colorado law allows for lethal control of coyotes when livestock and property is threatened. Harvesting restrictions would conflict with the current statutes.
Dan Gates, executive Director of Coloradans for Responsible Wildlife Management, says CPW needs to handle wolf reintroduction before taking on new coyote management efforts.
“Get the wolf deal finished and perfected before getting into another component of emotional dysfunction from animal rights extremists that want to further burden the agency and manipulate the management.”
Banning fur sales and coyote management were by far the most controversial topics during the stakeholder meetings. As previously reported by Complete Colorado, a state-wide ban of commercializing fur was kickstarted over the summer by out-of-state activists.
CPW concludes these conflicts are rooted in difference of values rather than biological justification and will not be included in their final recommendations.
CPW staff will present findings to Parks and Wildlife Commission in March.
