The smallest community in Massachusetts has a big problem…with coyotes.
However, the Board of Selectmen in the village of Nahant, which sits at the end of a long, narrow spit east of Boston, is doing something about it which isn’t making animal cruelty activists very happy. According to Boston.com, the MSPCA is among the critics of a plan to bring in professional sharpshooters to conk the coyotes.
The Massachusetts Gun Owners Action League (GOAL) is also raising a red flag because, as the group noted in a recent alert to its members, it amounts to a complete reversal of position on coyote management by the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife (MassWildlife).
“In 2019,” GOAL Executive Director Jim Wallace says in the alert, “bowing to pressure from anti-hunting advocates and animal rights activists, The Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife (MassWildlife) passed a regulation (modifications to 321 CMR 2 & 3) that ensured Massachusetts will be saddled with a booming and bold coyote population for the foreseeable future. Turning its back on its traditional constituency: hunters, MassWildlife’s politically motivated regulation changes were sold as a way to prevent so-called “wanton waste” of coyotes mainly. The new rules also banned predator hunting contests and classified coyotes as fur-bearing resources.
“Only a few years after the ill-conceived regulations were passed,” Wallace continues, “enter the tiny Massachusetts Town of Nahant and their new ‘epidemic’ of coyote attacks on people and pets. Not surprisingly, the one-square-mile island town connected by a 1.5-mile bridge to the City of Lynn has seen a drastic growth in the coyote population in the past few years.”
Drastic may be a relative term, since it appears the trouble involves an estimated dozen yodel dogs that have made it to the down via a long narrow strip of land between Nahant and the City of Lynn, on the mainland.
The plan to kill “habituated” coyotes involves shooting them at night. According to Boston.com, “Professional sharpshooters will stake out coyote communities and take out the animals with rifles during the night. This is a first-of-its-kind decision in Massachusetts, and has been approved by the state department of wildlife.”
But not so fast, says GOAL’s Wallace, who asserts this is “something that could be handled by local hunters.”
“Hunters…would have jumped at the opportunity to participate in such a hunt for the good of the Town,” Wallace says. “The same thing hunters were doing prior to MassWildlife bowing to political pressure.”
Wallace calls the sharpshooters “contract killers.”
The village leaders have acknowledged the effort will not likely eliminate all of the coyotes, Boston.com reported. Wallace concurs, noting that coyotes will quickly breed back the population. They can be fairly prolific.
Noting that Massachusetts is only one of four states that does not allow year-round shooting of coyotes, GOAL’s position is direct: “There is no reason this situation could not have been handled by local hunters and this situation proves that the 2019 regulations serve no legitimate purpose other than to limit the ability of law-abiding, responsible sportsmen to hunt coyotes-dangerous predators that have proved time and time again that they need to be kept under close control.”
