PORT HOOD- Current and former employees of the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) are urging local residents to back off from the “hysteria” that has arisen over Inverness County’s coyote population, following a recent fatality linked to two of the animals in the Cheticamp area.
Meryl Bustin, an area supervisor based at the DNR’s Whycocomagh office, addressed the issue at Monday afternoon’s public meeting of Inverness municipal council, after four councillors reported multiple coyote sightings since the October 27 death of Toronto folksinger Taylor Mitchell on the Cape Breton Highlands National Park’s Skyline Trail, north of Cheticamp.
While he confirmed that Mitchell’s death has heightened the awareness of local residents to the presence of coyotes in Inverness County, Bustin noted that the only other recorded coyote-related fatality occurred in California in 1981, and cautioned against the demonization of the animal.
“What we don’t want is hysteria,” Bustin told the council meeting in Port Hood.
“We’re getting a number of calls at our offices from people that want to report a coyote sighting - something that they wouldn’t do six months ago. Now they’re calling and they’re saying, ‘There’s a coyote in my back field.’ But if your backfield is close to the woods, it’s normal for a coyote to be in the backfield.”
Bustin confirmed that the department is taking coyote concerns seriously, and noted that all DNR wildlife staff is meeting in Debert this week to map out “a new direction” to deal with the animal, including the placement of so-called coyote control agents in areas reporting a high population of the creature.
However, he insisted that the department has no interest in revisiting a coyote bounty program that reportedly yielded limited results during a four-year trial run in the early ‘80s.
“Bounties do not work - you’re throwing money right out the window,” Bustin declared.
“It’s a feel-good thing, no question, when you’ve got a dead coyote and you’re paid the money, and everybody’s happy when that happens. But it’s not doing anything to control the population.”
In response to District 2 councillor Gloria LeBlanc’s declaration that coyotes are still following residents as they walk along the roads in such communities as Belle Cote and St. Joseph du Moine, Bustin suggested the use of noisemakers or walking sticks to ward off these animals. Although he cautioned against the use of prohibited items such as bear spray, Bustin welcomed LeBlanc’s decision to order a similar spray used to combat hornets and wasps.
“That [spray] will fire about 20 feet - it will completely blind an animal for a few minutes, at least. I’ve ordered some of that, and I’m going to keep some of it handy when I go walking, and I don’t care if it’s legal or not,” LeBlanc remarked.
Speaking to The Reporter last week, former DNR conservation officer and consulting biologist Robert Bancroft suggested that coyotes and humans should be wary of each other, and added that local residents should be very careful around any coyote that acts in a brazen or bold manner. However, he advised against running from such an animal, as they fixate on movement and running away actually stimulates the animals into thinking individuals are prey.
Bancroft also dismissed the concept of a coyote bounty as a waste of taxpayers’ dollars, and suggested that DNR officials should instead concentrate on the removal of problematic animals.
“If we were able to, in some way, kill off half the coyotes in Cape Breton, they’d just start having more babies as long as there was good habitat there,” Bancroft predicted, “and they’d go from a normal five-or-six young to 19.”