Comments on: Canids of the Allegheny National Forest

By: Rj

Rj — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 20:56:53 +0000

This is excellent information on the coyote. I like your attitude. I found this column by a blog search of the ANF.

By: goodtiller@verizon.n

goodtiller@verizon.n — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 15:30:02 +0000

the grandchildren are as foolish as the grandfathers because like all those who came here from across the western sea they are strangers and don’t belong here. the earth cries and weeps with every step they take on it.

By: The Agony of an American Wilderness (The Anthropik Network)

The Agony of an American Wilderness (The Anthropik Network) — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 21:57:12 +0000

[…] Emphasis added. So why is there no understory? What is stunting the growth of the Allegheny? Is it really, as MacDonald claims, simply “too far gone”? The role of black cherry in succession in a place like the Allegheny is to put shade on the forest floor, so that the understory can develop and eventually succeed. If loggers “remove enough trees to put light on the forest floor,” then that is not possible. When light reaches the forest floor, not only does that work against the trees that are supposed to succeed black cherry like hemlock and beech, but it also works in favor of earlier successional plants, like ferns. The significant overpopulation of whitetail deer is an enormous problem, as is beech bark disease, a problem that MacDonald does not discuss. As his own words clearly show above, deer overpopulation is another man-made problem, the result of Pennsylvania’s powerful hunting lobby, and perhaps even more crucially, the lack of an essential apex predator. Reading between the lines, it becomes obvious that the reason there is no understory is not because the forest is “too far gone,” but because of the very management MacDonald offers as a solution. Of the major reasons there is no understory today, only the one MacDonald neglects—beech bark disease—is not a direct result of how the forest is “managed.” The U.S. Forest Service may not have created a black cherry tree farm from the outset, but they have stunted the forest’s development, stopped its succession, and kept it as precisely that. Kleissler agrees that the denuded landscape was an even-aged forest upon the Allegheny’s creation, but that is not the problem he is trying to address. He charges that the Forest Service has abandoned responsible environmental stewardship by maintaining the forest’s unstable even-aged condition through intensive management. Forest Service officials counter that even-aged management not only supplies high-value timber to local industries, but also provides the best way—and maybe the only way—to move forward in a landscape already so heavily impacted by the hand of man. (p. 64) […]

By: Jason Godesky

Jason Godesky — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 19:52:59 +0000

Meat is more or less interchangeable, unlike vegetables, so a hungry predator will eat just about any animal. Western coyotes tend to be smaller than dogs or wolves, and tend to hunt smaller game: rabbits, etc. Wolves primarily eat deer, and have been known to take down cattle and horses. The eastern coyote, as mentioned in the article, is a mystery in many ways, but it seems to have a diet consisting primarily of deer, which is very wolf-like, so I’d imagine that a pony or small horse would not be off the menu for an eastern coyote in the right circumstances.

By: sibley1@alltel.net

sibley1@alltel.net — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 14:58:36 +0000

Question: Do coyotes go after small horses or ponies as prey?

By: R

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 15:04:35 +0000

Jason,
Been lurking for the past couple of months. Really enjoy the articles you write, and all the comments from others.
By the way, I live up the road from you in Millcreek-just outside of Erie.
Rob

By: Jason Godesky

Jason Godesky — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 20:15:43 +0000

This is a great resource I found on the eastern coyote that I just couldn’t fit into the article.