Suburban Howls: The Eastern Coyote & Coywolf

Jon Way talks about the experiences and findings as a wildlife biologist, studying coyote ecology and behavior in urbanized eastern Massachusetts. Jon is acting out a childhood dream to study wild animals. However, instead of going to far off places such as Africa or the remote stretches of the Rocky Mountains, he began his professional career in high school and college by tracking eastern coyotes in his own hometown on Cape Cod.

We hear so much about this unique animal and the conflicts it can create, but relatively little is known about the coyotes in the east. The lack of other studies taking place on coyotes in urbanized areas in eastern North America provided Way with the perfect graduate project, and an unending source of information and entertainment. The coyote is a remarkable animal, being one of the only carnivores to actually increase its range and distribution in the past one hundred years.  Coyotes have taken over as top predator in all environments in New England, from wilderness parks to city greenbelts.  Along its migration to the northeast it has become larger, likely the product of hybridization between western coyotes and eastern wolves, and with that, we see more speculation and theories about what the animal is, how it got here, and why it is here.

Jonathan (Jon) G. Way began his research on coyotes while at Barnstable High School on Cape Cod (1993). He received his B.S. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (1997), M.S. from the University of Connecticut at Storrs (2000), and Ph.D. from Boston College (2005), all related to his coyote research. Way’s main interest encapsulates the study of predators inhabiting urbanized ecosystems. For more information on these coyote projects, visit Jon Way’s homepage at http://www.easterncoyoteresearch.com.