Dear HCN:
Sid Goodloe’s reliance
upon wild turkeys to keep grasshoppers down and to fluff the forest
floor (HCN, 4/15/96) to help it burn reminds me of a similar
situation involving coyotes on a mountain ranch near Chiloquin,
Ore.
Through befriending a coyote they later
named Don Coyote, the Dayton Hyde family was led to finding how to
restore their land to a healthy condition with predators as a key
ingredient. And in a time when many family ranches have failed, the
restoration made their family ranch, the Yamsi, a paying
proposition.
After years of typical hit-and-miss
traditional ranching, weathering droughts, hard freezes and insect
and rodent infestation, Hyde ran into Don Coyote. His ranch had
never lost many cattle to coyotes, so they were tolerated. Not
fearing the Hydes, Don Coyote built a den under an old bulldozer.
Hyde left the dozer in place for nearly a year. The animal started
following him around, and he noticed its diet was primarily
composed of voles, ground squirrels, field mice and rabbits – all
the bane of forage grasses that his cattle depended upon.
Although Don Coyote lost his leg and tail to a
hunter, he survived, and led Hyde to think of his ranch in a
broader way. The rancher started to think of other natural elements
he might have overlooked. He rehabilitated a prehistoric lake on
the property, whose waters held heat into cold nights and created a
warmer microclimate on the ranch, which helped fend off killing
frosts. Native grasses returned to fatten his cattle more than the
exotics had done.
In a series of drought years,
Hyde’s ranch flourished. The lake and marshes attracted swans and
thousands of migrating birds. Raptors took up residence, and field
mice, voles, ground squirrels and insects were never again a
problem.
Livestock production doubled in the last
20 years, and in 1994, the Hydes were given the National
Cattlemen’s Association annual Environmental Stewardship Award for
the entire Northwest. As far as Hyde is concerned, the coyotes were
the key to it all. “I thought of the other species on the ranch,”
he said. “Without the flickers, badgers, trout, deer or chipmunks,
the ranch would have still flourished. But if I took away the
coyotes, the whole system fell apart. They were as necessary as any
tool I owned.”
R.E.
Baird
Boulder,
Colorado
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The heart of a ranch was a coyote.
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