On Thu, 12 Jan 2017 04:56:25 +0000 (UTC), David Scheidt
wrote:
Tim McNamara wrote:
:On Tue, 10 Jan 2017 12:38:09 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:
:
: Last week on the PBS program Nova, those animals were part of the
: hour-long show. Seems in the east, at least, they originated in
: Algonquin National Park, which had an isolated wolf population.
: When coyotes recently extended their range into the area, the
: coyotes and wolves mated, and they continue to do so.

:I saw that, too- quite interesting as I knew little about the urban
:coyote phenomenon. My Mom lived in a suburb of Chicago and reported
:to me that coyotes had been seen in town. I was skeptical but
:apparently it's a thing.

I live in Chicago. I've seen them from my living room.

I grew up in DuPage county just across the county line.

Chicago does have a number of parks and forest preserves, some green
waterway corridors, bike corridors, etc., which I suppose facilitate
getting into various neighborhoods without having to cross the Ike or
the Dan Ryan.

The Twin Cities has even had to have special bow hunting permits in the
wooded areas in some neigborhoods to reduce the mushrooming population.
With no predators to speak of, not to mention some folks feeding them,
there is a deer boom. The hunts are not to everyone's liking, of
course. But the alternative is starvation, getting hit by cars, etc.

Minnesota is also monitoring and trying to contain chronic wasting
disease in the deer and related animal populations; I think they are
trying to test every deer taken by getting biopsies of salivary glands
or something lke that. Keeping the deer population from getting too
overcrowded ought to help with that.