Customer Reviews

Living with Coyotes: Managing Predators Humanely Using Food Aversion Conditioning

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This book offers a unique glimpse into the behavior of a wild predator, coyotes, who have been brutalized by hunters and especially wildlife biologists over the past century. This book also offers an inexpensive and easy procedure, food aversion learning, for the nonlethal control of this amazingly adaptable animal and all other animals that are threatened.

"Writing frankly as an advocate of this effective and humane method of controlling coyotes, he asks, 'Why are we mired in the use of archaic, inefficient, unsophisticated, and barbaric methods of wildlife management in this age of reason and high technology? This question must be addressed while there is still a wildlife to manage.'" - from publisher review

What does Ellins mean, "while there is still wildlife to manage"? Advocate a technique that is not approved by EPA nor most states? I thought FIFRA regulated pesticides, and food aversion conditioning chemicals for coyotes are not registered.

"Actually, our project in the Antelope Valley continued for two more years, and the struggle continues to this day throughout much of the United States. Predator management has emerged as a highly controversial and emotion-laden contemporary issue, the extreme camps consisting of those livestock growers who view all predators as vermin that are a constant threat to their economic well-being, and conservationists who advocate the protection of predators at all costs as important components in the balance of nature. With the demise of many other predators in North America, and essentially all other large predators in the United States, the outcome of this controversy now weighs heavily on the survival of the coyote. The challenge is to devise management procedures that can adequately protect the agricultural community from the economic losses caused by free-ranging coyotes, while at the same time creating conditions that will ensure the future of this icon of American independence and adaptability." - from Chapter 1

Look, current coyote management strategies are not perfect. But asking people to give them up for one with a very poor track record in the scientific and management literature borders on unethical. Food Aversion Conditioning - flavor avoidance learning - is a real phenomenon. Legions of psychology students demonstrate it in labs every school year.

However, it has not been shown to work with stopping coyote predation on sheep, goats, calves, watermelon, irrigation lines, cats, endangered birds, or people.

"... it became readily apparent that the practice of management by death, at least in the war against coyotes, is unjustifiable on biological, economic, and moral grounds." -- from chapter 2

The book summarizes a great deal of interesting coyote behavior, particularly related to foraging. There is little original data. For the most part, this is a book telling why people who kill coyotes are wrong. It is not a techniques book on "Managing Predators Humanely Using Food Aversion Conditioning."