Well I’ve seen some of their tracks from time to time and heard a few stories about people seeing them on Cumberland; although most of these sightings were dismissed as being another animal, but on October 25th the Greyfield tour actually got a good look at a coyote off the North Cut Road on the north end of the Island. 

Originally an animal of our western states; coyotes have moved into most all of the eastern states over the last few decades and are now well established in all of Georgia counties, so it was just a matter of time before they made their way to Cumberland.  But how could this have happened?  Only two ways:  they were either brought over by man or they swam over from the mainland.  The swimming story is certainly plausible because like other canines, coyotes are good swimmers and like their larger cousins the wolves, they have a great deal of stamina.  Coyotes also follow their noses like other canines, so could this be how they found Cumberland?  The prevailing winds here are from the east which means the mainland is usually down wind from the island.  The scent from a large dead animal could possibly be carried to the mainland a couple miles away over mostly tidal marsh. 

This kind of feeding behavior also brings up another characteristic of the coyote and that is they will eat just about anything.  Being both highly adaptive and secretive they can be equally at home raiding garbage cans in a city or chasing down deer in an isolated wilderness area.  However, it’s the impact on game animals as well as livestock that has turned so many people against this elusive animal.  As a matter of fact, just about every hunter and farmer I’ve talked with over the years hates coyotes.  One western sheep farmer that was suffering heavy losses of lambs to coyotes stated that “Nature just can’t be safe with coyotes around”.  Even though the coyotes were more a natural part of the land than the sheep.  But it’s been this competition between people and coyotes that has reached epic proportions in some areas and condemned the wily coyote to a life on the run.

So how will this newcomer impact Cumberland?  Well; we don’t have sheep but we do have hogs that need to be eradicated and coyotes might take some of the smaller pigs.  But they won’t stop there.  These highly effective predators will also go after white-tailed deer along with many other native species.  With a native predator this keeps the system in balance.  But should the coyote be considered a native predator?  Even though they are native to many parts of North America, they are relatively new to the southeast and really new to Cumberland; (so new I don’t have photos of them yet for the blog).  However, some biologists have suggested they might be filling a niche left open when the native red wolf was nearly driven into extinction in this area sometime during the 1800’s.

Whatever the case, coyotes could change the dynamics of wildlife populations on the Island while providing a challenge to photograph in the future.