Wayne--

The coyote is a problem that I have not seen state wildlife departments acknowledge.

I am told of them going after deer, and you can only assume that they also kill birds that nest and feed on the ground, as well as anything else they can catch.

In Ohio there is a direct relationship between the increase in coyotes and the decline in ruffed grouse. However, I think there are other things that also contributed to the decline in grouse.

Sometimes it seems that officials don't foresee or act to prevent a problem or a trend until it has already occurred. They knew about pythons for years, but only when they got so plentiful and killed off many species did decisions get made to encourage killing them. I wonder if the approach has been that they would not try to eradicate them but only to "control" them. Maybe the thought is, "Well, once they eat up all their food supply, then mother nature will put her natural limits on their numbers and they will die back." The problems with that are that other species might not survive through such cycles, and there would always be some residual food source so sustain enough of the invasive species so that there would always be a breeding population.

Larry