Coyotes, not wolves, are natural predators of beaver

Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife Northeast district manager Patricia Huckery asserted to Globe correspondent Connie Paige in "Beaver dam flood woes hard to ignore," (Globe Northwest, Jan. 25) that "we don't really have predators that control beaver any more, such as wolves, so they're not being killed naturally."

Wolves are not significant predators of beaver, as 12 years of study since the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park have demonstrated - but coyotes are major beaver predators, and have established themselves throughout the Northeast partly because of the abundance of prey, beavers included, partly because of the absence of wolves, who keep coyotes out of their habitat. If you had wolves in Massachusetts, you would have fewer coyotes, but far more beavers than now.

Skeptics may consult the findings of Oregon State University ecologists William Ripple and Robert Beschta, who found that within three years of the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction, the coyote population plummeted by half, while the beaver population soared by 900 percent.

Merritt Clifton
Clinton, Wash.
The writer is editor of Animal People, a newspaper on animal protection issue.