Interbreeding With Coyotes
In the Animal Planet program, reports in Virginia have suggested that many of the Great Plains wolves in parts of the United States, including those migrating into said state, are diminishing in population due to a recent increase of crossbreeding with coyotes. In the Journal of Mammalogy by Christine Bozarth of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, DNA studies revealed that coyotes moving into Northern Virginia stopped along their route to breed with the Great Plains wolves migrating south. Bozarth and her colleagues also suspect that humans might have a hand for indirectly causing these crossbreedings by suggesting that the changes inflicted on North American ecosystems over the past 150 years, due to hunting, habitat encroachment, pollution and other causes, have pushed the coyotes out of their native homelands of the plains and southwestern deserts. As a result, many are migrating north into the wolf habitats, a factor that opens more chances for encounters between grey wolves and the southern coyotes allowing both species to hybridize.
Read more about this topic: Great Plains Wolf
Famous quotes containing the word coyotes:
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—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)