They\u2019re all kind of right.<\/p>\n
While coyotes in eastern Canada did evolve from interbreeding with wolves, domestic dogs and the smaller western coyotes \u2014 North America\u2019s original coyote that over time expanded east \u2014 scientists have repeatedly pointed out this happened more than a century ago. In other words, these animals are not newcomers, even for southern Ontario. Rather, they\u2019re known widely as eastern coyotes.<\/p>\n
Urban coyote issues haven\u2019t exclusively impacted eastern Canada, either. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a wave of visitors to Vancouver\u2019s Stanley Park reported being bitten<\/a> by western coyotes, according to CBC News. Meanwhile, in Edmonton there have been growing concerns from residents about coyotes, with increased human-wildlife conflict there over the past decade.<\/p>\n In Ontario, the problem has become tied to the notion of an urban half-wolf and the distinct threat it poses. The interactions people have with eastern coyotes, and what they report, tends to be negative, casting a pall, explained Stephanie Rutherford, associate professor at Trent University\u2019s School of the Environment.<\/p>\n \u201cThe way in which the term \u2018coywolf\u2019 gets deployed kind of amplifies that fear,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Rutherford, who published a book on Canada\u2019s history with wolves<\/a>, likes the term because it \u201cpoints to the in-betweenness of this creature \u2014 one that is really created, in part, by humans.\u201d<\/p>\n But when the media and public started adopting \u201ccoywolf\u201d around 2013, after one researcher published the term in scientific literature, it created a sort of fantastical \u201csuper predator,\u201d Rutherford said.<\/p>\n Coyotes have assumed the role of top predator in cities and other areas where more traditional apex predators such as wolves have been extirpated. While they do pose some threat to humans and their pets, coyotes\u2019 rise in prominence most notably impacts ecosystems farther north, where declines in eastern wolf populations have removed a key hunter from the landscape.<\/p>\n The eastern coyote\u2019s expansive territory is encroaching on this unique breed of wolves in Ontario whose population is declining as their bloodlines mix, and hunting and vehicle collisions take a toll.<\/p>\n Ontario\u2019s Ministry of Environment estimates there are between 350 and 1,000 mature eastern wolves in the province, with a core concentration in and around Algonquin Provincial Park. While the myth of the fearsome coywolf looms large for humans, the nugget of truth in it is the threat they pose to these wolves.<\/p>\n The coywolf is born<\/p>\n Hunters, like urbanites seeing a coywolf on their street, can struggle to differentiate coyotes and wolves. It\u2019s the reason wolf hunting restrictions in Ontario also apply to coyotes.<\/p>\n Chief Doreen Davis of Shabot Obaadjiwan First Nation, a non-status Algonquin nation west of Ottawa, said the difference is in their head shapes and frames, the colour of their fur and the way they point their tails. She also sees striking differences in their nature as predators.<\/p>\n \u201cThe wolf takes the sick and the weak, and they have a presence for that purpose,\u201d she said, noting they\u2019re also resourceful with kills and leave few remains. In contrast, she said the coyote leaves evidence of its kill.<\/p>\n Davis, who also goes by Migiziw Wan\u2019nakwad Ikwey (Eagle Cloud Woman), has made countless visits to Algonquin Provincial Park over her lifetime. She said she has been lucky to encounter and interact with a small population of eastern wolves, which she calls \u201cred wolves,\u201d near the Madawaska River and Animoosh Lake \u2014 animoosh, also spelled animosh, is Algonquin for \u201cdog.\u201d<\/p>\n Once, Davis witnessed wolf pups yapping on a quiet park road, their parents standing guard on opposite sides, when a buck emerged from the bush and the pups chased after him. In recent years, she said she has seen fewer wolves.<\/p>\n As settlers turned forest to farmland and hunted<\/a> thousands of grey wolves in the 19th and early 20th centuries, eastern North America opened for western coyotes. They had settled around southern Ontario by 1919<\/a>, according to one study, where they encountered eastern wolves, also called Algonquin wolves.<\/p>\n Genetically speaking, eastern coyotes are about two-thirds western coyote and one-third eastern wolf and also grey wolf, which tends to live farther north. Up to 10 per cent of eastern coyotes\u2019 genetic makeup comes from domestic dogs.<\/p>\n \u201cThe eastern coyote, as we know it today, was born in the early 20th century,\u201d Brent Patterson, a large mammal researcher with Ontario\u2019s Ministry of Natural Resources, explained. He has studied Algonquin\u2019s wolves since 2001 and feels it\u2019s largely inappropriate to label eastern coyotes as coywolves.<\/p>\n Eastern coyote specimens going back to the 1950s exhibit little change over time, suggesting coyotes across Ontario make up \u201cone large homogenous population,\u201d Patterson said, whether in Timmins, Cornwall or Windsor. \u201cThere\u2019s no evidence that they\u2019re changing, either physically or genetically,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a stable hybrid. It\u2019s been the way it is for 75, 80 years.\u201d<\/p>\n Lavania Nagendran, a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto who researches canid behaviour and morphology, and has studied dozens of eastern wolf and coyote specimens, said while eastern coyote skulls range between western coyotes\u2019 and wolves\u2019 in size, some characteristics are more \u201cwolf-like.\u201d This includes wider cheekbones and larger jaws.<\/p>\n \u201cThese traits tend to be correlated with [larger] or stronger jaw muscles, which could be linked to larger prey.\u201d<\/p>\n But eastern coyotes generally still prefer rodents and urban food sources, according to Nagendran. Overall, she said, eastern coyotes are more coyote than they are wolf.<\/p>\n \u201cThe distribution of these \u2018coywolves\u2019 is ubiquitous across [south and central] Ontario and Quebec and the Atlantic provinces,\u201d Dennis Murray, a canid researcher at Trent University and the Canada Research Chair in Integrative Wildlife Conservation, Bioinformatics and Ecological Modeling said. \u201cIt would be virtually impossible to find a pure-bred coyote east of Manitoba.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet, the idea of a coywolf as a distinct species from what eastern Canada is used to seeing has trickled out of misunderstanding. The use of the term \u201ccoywolf\u201d traces back to 2010, when wildlife biologist Jonathan Way, in Northeastern Naturalist, proposed using it<\/a> to broadly describe eastern coyotes. His argument<\/a> is that all eastern coyotes are hybrids, and that calling them coyotes ignores the wolf and dog attributes of their DNA.<\/p>\n \u201cCoywolf,\u201d Way said in an email to The Narwhal, \u201csummarizes the animal in a nutshell.\u201d However, the existence of a 50-50 hybrid of coyote and wolf \u201cis not true and never has been.\u201d Way said he has always meant eastern coyotes and coywolves are the same animal, and emphasized that \u201ccoy\u201d coming first in his portmanteau implies the animal is more coyote than wolf. But somewhere along the line, between social media and media reports, including a documentary<\/a> broadcast by the CBC in 2013, it spun into a new creature entirely \u2014 a beast whose real threat was largely ignored.<\/p>\n The problem for wolves in Ontario<\/p>\n In Algonquin Park and the surrounding area, some three hours north of Toronto, eastern wolves remain top dog, according to John Benson, a professor of vertebrate ecology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Benson spent from 2007 to 2013 studying Algonquin\u2019s wolves for his PhD. He said the safety of the park is probably the main reason they still exist in Ontario.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom a conservation standpoint, I think we should be concerned,\u201d Benson said. \u201cThe appropriate recovery goal for eastern wolves would be to expand the population, numerically and geographically, out from Algonquin.\u201d<\/p>\n Thanks to preserved mature forest \u2014 though some logging does still happen in Algonquin<\/a> \u2014 and protection from vehicles and hunting, eastern wolves not only survive there but are unlikely to hybridize, Benson said.<\/p>\n In general, coyotes avoid denser wolf populations like you\u2019d find in Algonquin, Murray of Trent explained. But as wolves venture outside the protection of the park, their numbers dwindle as they\u2019re picked off by hunters and cars, Patterson explained.<\/p>\n In a study published in 2024<\/a> that examined 18 years of data, Benson, Patterson and others analyzed 220 eastern wolves and found they struggle to survive anywhere outside the protection of Algonquin and the area immediately surrounding it. Among wolves living or roaming outside of Algonquin, the study found almost one in three died of human causes such as hunting or vehicle collision. Eastern wolves need at least 100 square kilometres per breeding pack, Patterson said, and can easily run into coyotes, cars or hunters within that.<\/p>\n As wolf density decreases \u2014 Patterson said their numbers in Algonquin have declined since the mid-2010s \u2014 coyotes are less deterred and mixing between the two is more likely.\u00a0<\/p>\n Benson, Patterson and colleagues are now modelling decades of data to simulate population viability and hybridization outside Algonquin. Within five years, they hope to know what conditions can best support eastern wolves.<\/p>\n The federal government recently uplisted the eastern wolf<\/a> from a species of special concern to threatened, under its Species at Risk Act. With that comes the requirement for a federal recovery strategy, written in collaboration with Ontario and Quebec.<\/p>\n Trans-jurisdictional conservation can be challenging, Benson noted. Quebec\u2019s Environment Ministry does not currently consider eastern wolves a distinct species, but rather a genetic group under the larger grey wolf species, a spokesperson told The Narwhal in an emailed statement. A new study<\/a> looks at the genetics of eastern wolves in Quebec and also pushes for their protection in the region just over the provincial border from Algonquin.<\/p>\n And while the federal government has influence over habitat protection and may be able to support eastern wolf\u00a0re-expansion \u2014 it must publish its recovery strategy by June 2026 \u2014 Patterson said recovery efforts really fall on the Ontario government as regulator of provincial parks and wolf hunting.<\/p>\n When the province listed eastern wolves as threatened<\/a> in 2016 under the Endangered Species Act, a provincial draft recovery strategy was developed and posted for public comment. It received a \u201cvery large volume of feedback,\u201d according to Patterson, who suggested that may have stalled things. Last January, he said efforts were underway to finalize that recovery strategy with management recommendations. Once the strategy was out, Ontario would have been required to release an action statement, under the Endangered Species Act, formally committing the government to its protection. But with the passage of Bill 5, the Protecting Ontario by Unleashing Our Economy Act<\/a>, the province repealed the Endangered Species Act<\/a> and replaced it with weaker legislation that removes the requirement for recovery strategies to be developed, and for the subsequent response statement to be released.<\/p>\n Ontario\u2019s Ministry of Natural Resources and Ministry of Environment did not confirm whether the eastern wolf recovery strategy would still be finalized following the passage of Bill 5.<\/p>\n Benson said more protections against hunting present the best chance for wolves\u2019 longevity. Currently, Queen Elizabeth II Wildlands and Kawartha Highlands provincial parks south of Haliburton, Ont., and Killarney Provincial Park farther north near Sudbury, have the same wolf and coyote hunting restrictions as Algonquin<\/a>, while other areas see seasonal restrictions.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Squamish-Estuary-Winter-09-Web.jpg\"\/)
While western coyotes such as this one continue to live in the western part of North America, it is the hybridized eastern coyote that now dominates in Ontario. Eastern coyotes, which are sometimes referred to as coywolves, carry DNA from wolves, domestic dogs and western coyotes. Photo: Jesse Winter \/ The Narwhal<\/p>\n![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ON-Algonquin-Eastern-Wolves-Erika-Squires.jpg\"\/)
Algonquin Provincial Park has become the last refuge for eastern wolves, pictured here. The species struggles to survive outside of the park, and hybridized eastern coyotes have assumed the role of top predator in many areas where wolves have been extirpated. Photo: Erika Squires<\/p>\n
![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ON-Algonquin-Eastern-Wolfe-Erika-Squires.jpg\"\/)
Some conservationists recommend expanding hunting restrictions to help eastern wolves re-establish themselves outside of Algonquin Park. That might help the species to resist further hybridization with coyotes. Photo: Erika Squires<\/p>\n