More than a dozen conservation groups petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to declare coyotes an endangered species in an effort to protect the Mexican gray wolf.
The petition suggests that increasing protections for the nonendangered coyote will help prevent accidental killings of the critically endangered Mexican gray wolf.
“We discovered that a lot of people were saying, ‘Oh, I accidentally killed this Mexican gray wolf because I thought it was a coyote,’” Cyndi Tuell, Arizona and New Mexico director for the Western Watersheds Project, told KOB 4 recently.
The petition, dated Dec. 8 and addressed to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams, includes several federal documents detailing incidents in which people mistakenly shot and killed a wolf thinking it was a coyote.
One incident reported that a Fish and Wildlife Service employee made the deadly mistake several years ago. He wrote, “I absolutely believe I was shooting at a coyote when I pulled the trigger.”
Tuell admits the mistake is not hard to make, which is the reason behind the petition.
“A young Mexican gray wolf is going to be about the same size as an adult coyote,” she said. “They’re both going to be gray, brown tan with a little bit of white. Unless you spent a lot of time looking at both coyotes and wolves to know those comparisons, it is a little bit tricky to tell.”
The new protections would apply only in the Mexican Gray Wolf Protection Area, which covers most of southern New Mexico. Tuell noted that there are only approximately 122 Mexican gray wolves in the wild. The most abundant gray wolf populations in New Mexico are believed to be limited to the Gila National Forest.
There are no regulations for coyote hunting in New Mexico, which makes it more likely that accidental wolf killings will go unreported and unpunished.
“Even people who admitted that they killed the wolf, if they claimed they thought it was a coyote, there wasn’t really any consequence for them,” Tuell said. Protecting the coyote would “take away the excuse that they thought it was a coyote.”
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has 90 days to respond to the petition.
