Old West Moves East : Coyotes Roaming Pennsylvania as the Sheep Ranchers Cry Wolf

The first sheep was found dead on Earl Cole’s farm last March, then another, and another, and another. Within 10 months, at least 80 lambs and ewes worth $10,000 were killed on his and his neighbors’ farms.

Predatory teeth had torn the sheeps’ throats or pierced their skulls, and their internal organs had been eaten. The kills appeared to be the work of coyotes, an Old West predator whose numbers are growing in the East.

“It’s circumstantial evidence. Nobody’s actually seen a coyote kill the sheep, but it pretty much has to be coyotes,” said Cole, 67, who tends 100 head of sheep on his 200-acre farm in Greene County.

To convince skeptics, Cole paid a trapper $50 to prove there are coyotes in the area.

Five female coyotes were trapped or shot near the scene of the crimes--rolling pasture 60 miles south of Pittsburgh, not the high, grassy plains of Wyoming or Montana.

That’s good enough for Richard Belding, land management officer for the Pennsylvania Game Commission, who called the evidence “overwhelming and conclusive.”

Kills Define New Habitat

Before 1980, only six incidents of coyotes preying on sheep had been verified in Pennsylvania. The recent run-ins with farmers are proof that the coyote, preceded by its mystique and villainous reputation, has moved into new territory.

In Pennsylvania, where coyotes can legally be hunted or trapped year-round, their number is estimated at 2,000 to 3,000. Arnold Hayden, a coyote expert with the state Game Commission, said: “They’re probably everywhere but downtown Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.”

A cousin of the wolf and the dog, the grayish-tan coyote has a fox-like head, pointed nose and a tail that resembles a bottle brush.

The Eastern coyote has both wolf and dog genes. The biggest ones weigh about 55 pounds. Its prairie-dwelling counterpart weighs about 30 pounds.

The coyote is a cunning hunter that bears no resemblance to the hapless cartoon character Wile E. Coyote, whose comical schemes always backfire whenever he chases the Roadrunner.

Real coyotes are omnivores. They feast on mice, rabbits, deer, carrion, grasshoppers, fruits and berries. Some also kill lambs, calves, goats, chickens, geese, pigs, cats, llamas and other domestic animals. Coyotes have pilfered watermelons from California farms. Last October, coyotes entered the Los Angeles Zoo at night and killed 48 flamingos after keepers forgot to lock the birds’ pen.

Coyotes vanished from Pennsylvania 10,000 years ago during the Ice Age. They began returning in the late 1890s, when the practice of clear-cutting in the forests exterminated the wolf by destroying its habitat. Coyotes thrive in open country.

“They’re filling an ecological niche created when we eliminated the wolf,” said Dr. John George, a senior biologist at Penn State University. “The coyote is very resourceful. People have tried to poison them and trap them. It’s tough to get rid of every last one.”

“There are coyotes in every Eastern state,” said Helen McGinnis, who did her master’s study on coyote populations at Penn State University. “The populations are building up and will continue to build up. I have a lot of admiration for them. They’re intelligent, adaptable.”

Biologists believe coyotes migrated from the Great Plains north and east around the Great Lakes about 90 years ago. The route took them into Ontario, then south to New England, New York, Pennsylvania and Appalachia. Others moved eastward from the plains and some were imported to be hunted with wolfhounds, McGinnis said.

Each year, an estimated 1 million sheep, or 10% of the national flock, are taken by predators, and coyotes account for 90% of the kills, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The livestock loss is estimated at $70 million.

Biggest ‘Preventable Loss’

“It’s our No. 1 preventable loss. This is the single largest cost of production that we think is reversible,” said Dan Murphy, president of the Washington-based National Wool Growers Assn.

The number of sheep ranchers has dwindled from 225,000 in the 1960s to 125,000, said Dr. Clair Terrill, former director of sheep research for the USDA. Nationally, the U.S. sheep population has fallen from 55 million during World War II to about 10 million, said Terrill. He blames coyotes for much of the decline.

To promote mutton, Idaho sheep ranchers farmers coined this bumper sticker: “Eat American Lamb--5 Million Coyotes Can’t Be Wrong.”

Others see no humor in the situation.

“I only know one good coyote, and that’s a dead coyote,” said Rick Moore of Harrison County, Ohio, where farmers pay a bounty of $25 per animal.

Don Patterson, president of the Sheep Growers’ Assn. in Greene County, Pa., called coyotes “a damned nuisance. They’re taking money out of our pocket.”

The coyote has outsmarted and outlasted official attempts to shoot, trap and poison it into oblivion. In 1972, the government banned poison baits on federal lands, partly because they were killing other animals.

In 1983, the government allowed farmers to put poison collars on sheep if they met two dozen restrictions to protect the environment. So far, the collars have been approved in Wyoming, Montana and Texas.

Wildlife lovers say that the coyote is unfairly maligned, that stalking a sheep is a learned skill and that not all coyotes prey on livestock. Most avoid humans, and they also keep rodent populations in check.

“Coyotes are opportunistic. They’re not evil,” said Susan Hagood of Defenders of Wildlife, a Washington-based group with 80,000 members nationwide. She said coyotes can be discouraged by guard dogs, electrified fencing and placing ewes in shelters when they lamb. They advocate selective shooting or trapping of sheep killers.

“It would be a waste of time, effort and money to try to eliminate (all coyotes). The government spent millions of dollars and failed to eradicate the coyote. We would hate to see Eastern states adopting Western philosophies and making the same mistakes,” Hagood said.

Some states have studied the impact of coyotes on deer populations. In Maine, selective trapping eliminates troublesome predators, but they are not significantly depleting the deer herd.

“As far as I know, the coyote has not had any serious repercussions on native wildlife. It does not appear to be a disaster. If it is causing people problems, people have themselves to blame,” said Ronald Novak of the U.S. Department of Interior.