The coyote? Yes, the coyote.

A distant relative of the wolf – and your family’s dog – the playful, social and widespread coyote has been our neighbour for over a million years. And it’s been the enemy to some since about the time Christopher Columbus got lost.

And when we make enemies with nature, we usually come out on top. Except when it comes to old Wile E.

via GIPHY

Coyotes are one of the most important predators in this landscape – on any landscape. They’re not particularly strong physically and even in a pack, they struggle to take down large ungulates.

But what the coyote lacks in strength and teeth, they make up for with smarts.

The coyote scavenges its food – whether in the back alleys of downtown Toronto or from the remains of a grizzly’s feast. Using its speed and cunning, it can navigate larger predators and know the perfect time to strike, steal and jet away with a portion of someone else’s meal. And if it sounds a lot like another smart resident of Mount Robson, you’re not wrong.

In fact, ravens, vultures and coyotes are the most effective waste managers. Without them, rotting meat (or carrion) isn’t redistributed across the ecosystem, removing a key ingredient that enables soil to be a superpower in storing carbon and growing life that provides oxygen. With scavengers? We save billions thanks to their clean-up services.

You see, this canid is one of the few animals that has no problem with being our neighbour. As we develop land and altered habitat, animals like the grizzly and the wolf have disappeared. Not only have we created the wide-open spaces coyotes prefer, we’ve also removed their competition.

And because they’re smart, coyotes have realized it’s not just bears offering free meals; Humans do as well – usually in the form of our pets and our livestock – so we try to control them.

But guess what? We don’t give coyotes enough credit.

Despite hundreds of years of predator control efforts, study after study shows that they’ve not worked. When we kill coyotes, we simply put a vacancy sign up for other coyotes to move in because, basically, all habitat is coyote habitat. That means no matter how many coyote pups are being killed by predator control programs, more keep arriving.

In many ways, our failure to sustain or co-exist with other predators has given us our current fight with the coyote – a fight we’re not winning, if the goal is fewer coyotes.

Which is pretty amazing.

So too is the fact that 19 different subspecies exist across the continent, each having evolved with changing ecosystem conditions. One subspecies has even evolved by genetically merging with wolves and feral, domestic dogs – what’s known to some as coywolves – to further aid them in an urbanized landscape.

And though the very concept of coywolves is almost as hotly debated as the very value of coyotes, the one thing that is clear: no matter what we throw at this ancient dog, they keep finding ways to adapt and thrive.

This might make you think they’re nothing more than a dog-sized cockroach. But think about this: Not only do coyotes play their role in the ecosystem well, they also have learned to cover the gaps created by other missing predators in the landscape. And that means even if the Robson Valley is missing the badger, the coyote hasn’t let nature notice.

That matters. An animal willing to live with us; willing to adapt to us; willing to overcome us – all to help sustain biodiversity, which sustains us – is a lesson we can learn from and build on.

So, yeah: what does resiliency look like? Look no further than the coyote.