With wolf DNA in their genes, coyotes might be taking on more ‘wolf-like’ traits

animals are likely to live in ornear most city parks, and are confirmed in all AlleghenyCounty parks.

In 2008 a woman walking her dog off-trail in North Park was terrified when a family of coyotes attacked the pet. In 2010 a coyote was shot on Mount Washington — a legal kill by Game Commission standards but frowned upon at the time by Pittsburgh police. Municipal officials in the North Hills get routine coyote complaints, and in 2015 Ross held a community forum to discuss increased coyote sightings.

Just 25 pet deaths attributed to coyotes were confirmed in Pennsylvania in 2012, but a Game Commission source said the actual number is probably extremely high. In 2014 a state legislator attempted to create a $25-per-pelt coyote bounty after neighbors complained their outside pets weren’t making it back home. The losses wereblamed on coyote predation.

But fears that coyotes could become a bigger threat, especially to people, are largely unfounded, said Camilla Fox, executive director of California-based Project Coyote. The animals are generally timid around humans — the only documented fatal Eastern coyote attack occurred in 2009 in Nova Scotia when a 19-year-old Canadian man was mauled by coyotes.

Eastern coyotes take a large number of whitetailed fawns in spring, but it is believed their ability to take down mature deer is limited to the old, injured and snowbound. Coyotes will have a greater chance of survival if they gain greater access to the deer, said scientists.

Pennsylvania’s liberal coyote hunting regulations include a year-round open season and no harvest limits. The 2017-18 coyote steel trap season extends from Oct. 22 through Feb. 18 with no limit, and the cable restraint season runs Dec. 26 through Feb. 18, no limit.

But coyote management through legal hunting doesn’t work. Few hunters target coyotes except during organized coyote derbies, usually held in January and February. The number of trappers continues to drop and the market for Eastern coyote pelts fluctuates from $30 down to just $6. Game Commissionfurtaker biologist Tom Hardisky said in 2016 the coyote’s density and range were “almost maxed out,” adding, “They’re everywhere. We’re at the point where there’s nothing we can do to change the number of coyotes out there.”

Wildlife authorities are interested in finding what additional wolf-like traits will mean for the future of coyotes, said Wally Jakubas, mammal group leader for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

“Whether these wolf genes are conferring some kind of advantage to these coyotes,” he said, “that’s where it really gets interesting.”