In testimony before the Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee, president and founder of the Maine Wolf Coalition stated that Maine could not legally allow the hunting of coyotes, because the coyote is not a coyote. LD 691 is a proposed bill that would allow for hunting the coyote on Sundays. Maine bans all hunting on Sunday.
John Glowa’s testimony is interesting and reveals, not only his lack of knowledge about wolves, coyotes, hybrids, cross-breeding, DNA, and all associated aspects of this subject, but it also helps to open debate on the real problems we face in dealing with protection of a species for the good of the species and protection of the species for political gain.
The president of the Maine Wolf Coalition gets confused in stating that a coyote is not a coyote because it’s a hybrid and attempts to convince the IFW Committee that there is some magical “statutory” definition, that when applied, renders any coyote hunting illegal. By definition, the wild canines running the Maine woods are the result of cross-breeding and not a planned out hybridization in order to create a mixed breed of wild dog.
A dog is a dog is a dog and when practical, all dogs, regardless of subspecie designation, will interbreed. To assist in the preservation of wild dog subspecies, efforts should be made to keep these subspecies geographically separated as much as possible. This is usually done by limiting populations and not by protecting them at every turn and allowing them to grow unchecked, while thinking that coyotes/wolves are necessary for a healthy forest dwelling and that Nature balances itself. This is romantic nonsense that destroys animal species.
It is a bit spurious that arguments, such as the testimony given to the IFW Committee, claim, in order to, at this moment in time, protect coyotes, put forth the claim that a coyote isn’t a coyote because it has wolf genes in it. On another day, the same committee might hear from the same group that any wild dog that has wolf genes in it is a wolf and must be protected.
Protecting wild dogs, and introducing wild dogs into human-settled landscapes, may be the quickest way I know of to destroy the subspecies. With increased overlapping of wild dog subspecies, all wild dogs, i.e. all subspecies of wolves, coyotes, released domestic dogs, released wolf-dog hybrids and domestic dogs, will, over time, and due to protection, become just a mongrel, cross-bred mutt.
Is this acceptable while Environmentalism works to end hunting and trapping?
It’s what’s for lunch.
