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Chicago Using Coyotes To Fight Rodents
Brad Block, a supervisor for the Chicago Commission on Animal Care and Control says a coyote recently spotted downtown is part of a program designed to monitor the rodent population. "The animal has the run of the Loop to help deal with rats and mice," He said no one has called today to complain. “He’s not a threat. He’s not going to pick up your children,” Block said. “His job is to deal with all of the nuisance problems, like mice, rats and rabbits.”
Reminds me of introducing mongoose to the Hawaiian islands to eat the rats - now there are two invader species there. Coyotes may not be as much of an invader species in Chicago as mongoose are in Hawaii, but we as a species have a pretty poor track record of attempted ecological control.
Based on production functionality, I assumed they were already owned by Haliburton.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Coyotes are endemic to most of the North American continent. They were here before long before there was a 'Public' to get hysterical about them. I would be willing to bet that animal control in nearly every major city in the lower 48 can tell you stories about coyotes making a living in urban areas- this is NOTHING NEW, but is probably noticed more frequently as fewer people in outlying areas are shooting them on sight these days.
Coyotes frequent my rural property, although I only find out about it when I find their tracks or scat or- more rarely- hear a nocturnal sing-along happening close by. Over the years I've picked apart quite bit of coyote poop with a stick, and as the article suggests there are a lot of obvious rodent bones usually included with a smattering of deer hair (I suspect they go back to road/winter/cougar kill and chew on the hide, which takes months to break down). Sometimes it's obvious they've been feasting on ripe native berries. If I happen to see one while hiking, mountain biking, driving, etc. it's usually just a flash and they're already gone, but a couple times I've been able to spot one out on a hay field obviously pouncing on mice. It's a rare treat to find "God's Dog" out and about doing it's thing, as under normal circumstances they are highly motivated to keep human interactions both infrequent and distant.
Feral cats on the other hand are NOT endemic to the North American ecosystem, and there is evidence to suggest that bird populations have been hit very hard by them. Even discounting that aspect, I can't even wrap my head around why any thoughtful person would advocate for exterminating a relatively harmless native scavenger-predator and replacing it with a non-native, domesticated scavenger-predator. This is just asking for unintended ecological consequences.