Given the special bond humans and canids share, it seems only natural that I turn to the specific role that they’ve played in my home. What emerges is an amazing testimony to the power of the spirit of that place. Like everything else there, it is fundamentally a story about a primeval ecology that was destroyed, and a new ecology emerging in the same place—something new, something different, but something unmistakably related to its ancestor. If there’s a single line that could sum up the story of that place, found like fractals in the story of every community nested in that place, it might be that phrase so often attributed to Mark Twain: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.”

The gray wolf or “timber wolf,” Canis lupus, is the most successful mammalian predator the world has ever seen—a success owing not to its biology, but to its sociology. The cooperation of wolf packs made wolves the alpha predators of the entire world above 15° N latitude. The success of our own species owes a great deal to our symbiosis with wolves, essentially abandoning more commonplace primate social structure, and emulating the social structure of the wolf pack in the human band or tribe.¹

Once upon a time, these were the wolves of the Allegheny Forest. The impact of the wolf here was of the same kind as that of the wolves of Yellowstone. Wolf predation kept deer population down to roughly 10 per square mile. Of course, the creation of the “Allegheny Brush Heap” out of what had once been the Allegheny Forest, along with the usual human fear and predation on wolf populations across the country, drove the wolves out. Today, wolves are considered extinct in the new Allegheny National Forest.

While tightly-knit wolf packs kept the Allegheny Forest intact, the grasslands and deserts of the southwest were home to the western coyote, Canis latrans. These were more marginal ecologies, with less to go around. Coyotes were smaller, and the level of social complexity they could support was lower—coyotes typically hunt alone, and do not have packs like wolves do. Instead, coyotes live by their wits as opportunists. Native American legends often contrast the antics of Coyote against the stolid sensibilities of big brother Wolf, and in the legends of the southwest, Coyote is the Trickster.

Since the Navajo are known to have migrated from their main cultural grouping in the subarctic, their religion has obviously undergone change. Among the Athapascans of the North, Raven is the Trickster-Culture Hero and this fact emerges obliquely in Navajo culture, as Raven (or Crow, the Navajo do not distinguish the two) is linked with Coyote in Myth and there is an obsolescent ceremonial—Ravenway—which Navajos believe is linked to Coyoteway. Raven and Coyotes are also observed in association in nature. Raven emerges, in the form of Crow and Black God, as Master of Animals in hunting myth, a position denied to Coyote who of course is a predator. Raven has been superceded by Coyote at some stage in Navajo history. Coyote in myths attains the position of Holy Person, with his own offerings and this is consolidated in Coyoteway, the ceremonial to restore harmonious relationships between humans and Coyote. As a predator he is associated with hunting. Hunting is, after all, a form of trickery requiring cunning, and there is no better survivor in nature than coyote. In fact, the paradigm provided by coyote as an animal is ideally suited to the status as Trickster figure.²

Where wolves dominated most of the world through the overwhelming power of the pack structure and cooperation, coyotes are smaller, leaner tricksters that live alone, relying on opportunism and wit to survive. Coyotes remained in the west, and wolves retained their forests, because of the hostility that exists once the pack-bond is formed. Coyotes were intruders in the wolf pack’s territory, and they were treated as such—alone, against an entire pack of larger predators.

That changed with the disappearance of the wolf from the eastern forests. Coyotes began to move into the niche the disappearing wolf left empty, but not just any coyote—a new breed called the eastern coyote. The nature and history of the eastern coyote is a subject of controversy. It is something wholly new emerging in the eastern woods, descended from coyotes, living in the lands once ruled by wolf packs. Western coyotes tend to eat small game; eastern coyotes predominantly eat deer (in one study, 57% of recovered eastern coyote scat included deer³).

The eastern coyote differs from the western coyote by the lack of foot-sweat, a larger skull (although smaller than that of a wolf), more weight and less aggressiveness toward its mate or siblings. These are all wolf traits. That makes the eastern coyote sort of an intergrade between the wolf and western coyote and suggests the two have interbred. But how can this be when wolves normally kill coyotes that range into their territory? Because of this wolf intolerance of their smaller relative, coyotes have never been very numerous where there are wolves. But biologists, through DNA analysis, are finding wolf genes in eastern coyotes. Under what circumstances would breeding between these two competitive species have taken place? This is where human meddling enters the picture.

Wolves are very sociable and survive only in packs. In the 19th and early 20th century wolves were persecuted wherever possible in the United States with the goal of exterminating them. As the wolves declined, the coyotes moved into their territory and encountered lone wolves from broken packs. Their mates gone, male wolves mated with the only breeding animals they could find - female coyotes. Mitochondrial DNA testing has shown this was the only way it occurred (male wolves to female coyotes) because female wolves would probably not tolerate the advances of the smaller male coyote.⁴

The eastern coyote that now stalks the Allegheny Forest may well be a descendant of the same wolves once driven from the same place—if nothing else, it is undeniable that the eastern coyote looks, and acts, a lot more like the gray wolf than his western cousin.

In plain language, Wilson said his work suggests the large, eastern coyotes in Canada are hybrids of the smaller western coyotes and wolves that met and mated decades ago as the coyotes moved toward New England from their earlier western ranges. The animals, he said, may become amplified in size by further crossings between the now-larger eastern coyotes and Canadian wolves. …

“Once you get that coyote-and-wolf hybrid,” Paul Wilson said, “it is a very adaptable animal.”⁵

It is thought that the eastern coyote entered Pennsylvania from the Catskills, through the Poconos, and spread across the north of the state. Today, the Allegheny National Forest is one of the eastern coyotes’ most entrenched ranges, much to the chagrin of local hunters, farmers and ranchers who blame the coyotes for the loss of their livestock. Despite evidence that it’s an inefficient way to preserve disastrous farming practices,⁶ the state of Pennsylvania allows hunters to hunt coyotes any time of the year, and even supports state-wide coyote hunts.⁷

You may have given coyote-hunting a try, but discovered that the hunting was far better than the killing. Don’t fret, and whatever you do, don’t give up. This is fun sport and besides, you might save some cattle or sheep ranchers a bundle of money. At the least, you might meet a rancher who takes a liking to your coyote-hunting prowess and invites you back for deer hunting next fall.⁸

Of course, such hunting is counter-productive. Biologist Bob Crabtree, who has studied the western coyote for twenty years, says “coyote-killing campaigns, which disrupt the structure of coyote society, may actually spur more predation.” With rancher Dude Tyler, he helped form Predator Friendly, a certification program that allows ranchers who don’t hunt coyotes to sell their wool for a significantly higher price. “Still, the bureaucracy which runs the sheep industry has been downright hostile toward the Predator Friendly idea and has even subtly threatened participating ranchers with boycotts.” Others at Predator Friendly have recieved anonymous, threatening phone calls.⁹ The campaign to wipe out the coyote is not rational; it is an emotional need to hunt the beast within.¹⁰

“I hope you kill a lot of coyotes.” The local game warden pronounces the word kai-oats, the way it’s said in most of the West. “I don’t care how you kill ‘em. Blow ‘em up with dynamite. Run ‘em over. Punt ‘em like footballs. Whatever.” This elicits a good deal of laughter from the 100 or so people I’ve joined in the small hunting lodge at the Circle G Shooting Park, just south of Gillette, Wyoming.¹¹

The wolf packs that once ruled the north, that taught humans how to create a society, could not withstand the onslaught of complex human civilizations. Instead, it was their wily, opportunistic cousins, the coyotes, that knew how to pick a living from human scraps. Their Trickster spirit allowed them to flourish in the context that wolves could not abide, and they inherited the former domains of their big brother. But the spirit of place is a very powerful and subtle force—the eastern coyote combines both heritages into an extremely adaptable whole, a syncretism that makes them stronger than either of their pure-bred ancestors.

In spite of the hunting, or perhaps even because of it, the coyote population in Pennsylvania is rising.¹²

Humans are the coyote’s chief enemy. It has been estimated that 30 to 50 percent of all adult coyotes die each year from human-related causes. The coyote’s reproduction level appears to be directly correlated to attempts to control its population. Larger litters seem to be born in areas where intensive efforts at extermination or control have been undertaken. If coyotes in a certain area are killed, die or are relocated, the remaining coyotes will fill the vacancies, either with larger litters or by allowing outsiders to move into the area. This species has survived hunting, trapping, shooting, poisoning and other attempts of eradication and remains a strong link in the ecological cycle.

Coyotes are actually helpful to ranchers and farmers because they kill destructive, vegetation-eating rodents whose burrowing holes have injured many cows and horses. Coyotes love insects and have saved many a farm from massive large insect invasions (grasshoppers). Coyotes help keep the balance of nature in order. Natural rodent control is preferable to man-made poisons and inhumane traps.¹³

The eastern coyote seems uniquely appropriate as the new canid for the new Allegheny National Forest. It is a new, emerging variety trying to find its place, just like the whole forest, trying to work out a whole new community. Its story is very much the same as the whole land—one ancient living community was utterly destroyed by the ravenous advance of civilization, and now that a new community is beginning to emerge and make its way in the world, the grandchildren of those very same people who created the “Allegheny Brush Heap” are passionately, irrationally, suicidally bent on repeating the same crimes their ancestors committed. For the eastern coyote, we see it in the coyote hunts, in the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s permissive coyote hunting rules, or in the government eradication programs.

But this is our home. We can hear our own story retold by this land, and retold again and again by the rest of the living community there—perhaps most clearly, by the coyotes’ night-time howl. We won’t be sitting by idly through this, because this isn’t just a threat to a recreational facility or a lucrative tree farm—this is a threat to our home. This is a threat to our soul.