Fear of large predators is pushing bobcats and coyotes into close contact with humans, who are even more likely to kill the small carnivores than the wild predators.

Overhunting drove US wolf and cougar populations to a sliver of their former abundance in the 1900s. Since then, protections under the US Endangered Species Act have helped both species make a steady recovery. Because wolves and cougars feed on bobcats and coyotes, researchers anticipated that the return of these top predators would control the number of smaller animals.

To investigate, at the University of Washington in Seattle and her colleagues tracked the movements of 22 wolves (Canis lupus), 60 cougars (Puma concolor), 35 coyotes (Canis latrans) and 37 bobcats (Lynx rufus) using GPS collars between 2017 and 2022. They followed the animals across two forested regions of Washington state punctuated by roads, ranches, homes and small towns.

When wolves and cougars moved into an area, bobcats and coyotes appeared to avoid the larger predators. They spent more time near the developed and human-populated areas that wolves and cougars typically avoid. But this move often had fatal consequences: around half of the coyotes and most of the bobcats that died during the five-year study period were killed by people.

“A few coyotes and bobcats were shot while trying to raid chicken coops,” says Prugh, and others were shot on sight or snagged in traps. They found that humans killed between three and four times as many small carnivores as the apex predators did.

Prugh says that earlier studies on small carnivores suggested a strong fear of people, “so from that perspective, we were a little surprised that they shifted more towards humans in the presence of large carnivores”. The discovery that human-populated areas were more deadly to small carnivores suggests the phenomenon known as the “human shield effect”, in which some animals seek refuge near people, can be lethally self-defeating.

Fleeing top predators for the human-dominated spaces backfires for the bobcats and coyotes by making them more vulnerable to human killing, says at the University of Washington in Seattle who wasn’t involved in the work. “Smaller predators aren’t able to accurately assess the mortal danger that humans represent.”

Wisconsin’s latest census of grey wolves reveals that populations have dipped slightly following what some have called a “disastrous” hunting season meant to cull the recently recovered population. The estimated that there were around 1126 wolves in Wisconsin, and this year’s report estimates that number is closer to 972 wolves, a roughly 14 per cent decrease.

Residents in the state are in a scientific and political tug of war over whether grey wolf populations have recovered enough to be stripped of federal protections or should remain safeguarded under the US .

Grey wolves (Canis lupus) were once abundant across North America until hunting in the mid-1900s drove them to near extinction. Since they earned protections under the 1973 Endangered Species Act, the canines have been slowly expanding from Canada into pockets of the western United States.

When a species’ population is considered recovered, it is removed from the , or “de-listed”. Despite a steadily growing population over the long-term, grey wolves have been on a “roller coaster of clarification changes” over the past two decades, says at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The wolves have been re-listed and de-listed more than a dozen times in 20 years, with the latest re-listing in February.

“Wolves bring into sharp focus some of the underlying questions that are unresolved in how the Endangered Species Act is implemented,” says at the Klamath Center for Conservation Research in California. “It’s not enough to just save species from total extinction. It’s also important to consider how broadly they’re distributed.”

Strict limits on hunting have allowed Wisconsin’s grey wolf population to rebound from a few dozen individuals in the 1980s to more than 900 wolves today, and more than 7000 nationally. Because the state has limited wilderness areas, the increase in wolf populations brings them into conflict more often with people and livestock.

Though the wolves occupy just a fraction of the range they did a century ago, some people – especially those who want to protect domesticated animals such as sheep and cattle from predation – say the wolf population is stable enough to warrant allowing some of them to be hunted.

During the most recent period that grey wolves were off the Endangered Species List, from October 2020 to February 2022, Wisconsin held a single, calamitous wolf hunt. The state’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR), which determines the number of wolves that can be killed based on their latest population models, set a limit of 119 individuals. In February 2021, hunters killed an estimated 218 wolves in less than three days.

Wisconsin’s Ojibwe people were allocated 81 kills but held off after non-native hunters overshot their quota. In April of this year, six of the tribes co-authored opposing the wolf’s de-listing. “Wisconsin has shown a lack of understanding of, and often a complete disregard for, tribal wolf protection and management efforts,” they wrote.

proposed in March pushed for the wolves to be taken off the Endangered Species List again, which would open the species to hunting. Some say the current population is too vulnerable to survive hunting, while others prefer that the state eradicates wolves entirely.

A published this year found it is more likely than not that another hunt similar in size to the one in autumn 2021 would have pushed wolf populations in the state below 250 individuals, the threshold that mandates the species is re-listed.

But there are also drawbacks to letting wolf populations recover. Last year, the state reported nearly 80 likely or confirmed wolf attacks on livestock and pets, costing Wisconsin around tens of thousands of dollars in compensation to ranchers.

Still, there are economic incentives for keeping wolves around. Because the canines eat the state’s abundant white-tailed deer, diseases carried by the deer, such as Lyme disease, may spread more slowly. And a 2021 found that the presence of wolves reduced the state’s deer-vehicle collisions by nearly 24 per cent, saving the state over $10 million per year. The same study found that the economic benefit of having wolves around is 63 times greater than the cost of compensating farmers or ranchers for wolf predation on their livestock.

But legally, the sole factor that can determine a species’ status on or off the Endangered Species List is scientific evidence of its recovery – not political or social pressures. But where to draw the line between recovered and not recovered isn’t a question science can answer. “Science can tell us a lot of things, but it can’t tell us what we’re trying to achieve,” says Jennifer Price Tack at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

The fundamental question of what recovery looks like for grey wolves remains. Wisconsin’s sets a goal of maintaining at least 350 wolves throughout the state, excluding animals on tribally held land. If the latest de-listing bill is approved, the state will once again be faced with the decision of how many grey wolves to protect, and how many to offer up to hunters.

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A genetic reservoir of red wolf “ghost DNA” has been found hidden in coyote-wolf hybrids in southwestern Louisiana. The long-lost genes represent genetic diversity that experts thought disappeared when the last 14 wild red wolves were captured and bred in the 1970s.

Red wolves (Canis rufus) are critically endangered. Just over 200 live in captivity, and only one population was reintroduced to the wild in North Carolina in 1987. By 2012, that population reached 120 individuals, but today only 20 remain.

The rewilded wolves are genetically homogeneous and therefore more vulnerable to harmful genetic mutations, changing environments and extinction. The genetically diverse coyote-wolf hybrids may hold the keys to the species’ survival.

“It’s hard for me to feel anything but optimistic,” says at Princeton University in New Jersey.

She and her colleagues sequenced the genomes of more than 30 coyotes from southwestern Louisiana, where red wolves last lived in the wild and where they mingled and mated with coyotes. They found that up to 69 per cent of the genomes originated from red wolves.

The canine chimeras look like intermediates between the two species, but vonHoldt says they behave more like wolves. “I don’t think we should call it a coyote anymore,” she says. “If it looks like a wolf, and it acts like a wolf, maybe we should just call it a wolf.”

The wolf-like coyotes could be the key to conservation. She says that when more red wolves are ready to be reintroduced to the wild, they should be placed close to hybrid carriers of this ghost DNA. Natural matings between the two could increase the genetic diversity of the dwindling gene pool.

Additionally, the researchers are developing biobanks – what vonHoldt calls “frozen zoos” – of coyote cells that could be cloned to resurrect genetic diversity in the natural population. The biobank might also be used to edit red wolf genes back into captive populations, but vonHoldt remains sceptical of that approach.

at the University of Florida, who wasn’t involved with the study, says that biobanking can “absolutely rescue a species”, pointing to successful cloning in endangered black-footed ferrets and Przewalski’s horses.

The study fundamentally challenges how we think about hybrids and conservation. “The US Fish and Wildlife Service doesn’t have a policy on endangered species hybrids,” says at Revive & Restore, a US biotechnology company. “The red wolves could be pioneering that.”

Wisely agrees that preserving ghost genes from hybrids is groundbreaking. “It’s an innovative approach that really calls the US Fish and Wildlife Service to act,” she says. Protecting the coyote-wolf hybrids is well within their regulatory power, even if they don’t designate them as an endangered species, she says. “I’m not sure if people ever talked about conservation in this way.”

Now, vonHoldt is working with nonprofit organisations and government agencies to translate these findings into policy. “There’s a lot to do,” she says, “but the future is bright.”

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