Despite efforts to eradicate, coyotes are here to stay 

By: Glynn Harris

My dad spent the last 30 years before he retired working with predator control for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. His job, simply stated, was a wolf trapper. He also trapped bobcat, foxes and other predators but red wolves were his primary focus. 

During that period in the 1940s and ‘50s, wolves had no competition from other similar sized canids until another more prolific creature, the coyote, began to show up in the state. As far as I’ve been able to determine, my dad trapped the very first coyote ever captured in Louisiana. As the population of red wolves began declining, his focus was mainly on the more prolific coyote.