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​How are eastern coyotes, eastern wolves and grey wolves different?

Grey wolves are the biggest of the three species. They live in boreal forests all the way north to the sub-arctic shores of Hudson and James Bays. These animals live in family-based packs, and their primary prey are moose, beaver, as well as deer and caribou where they occur. Grey wolves can weight more than 100lbs, and they have multiple colour phases, ranging from all white in the far north, to all black, seal grey and any mixture of tawny colours.

Eastern wolves are smaller than grey wolves, and larger than eastern coyotes. The average eastern wolf weighs between 52 and 65 lbs. They are not known to be all white or black, and typically have mixed tawny colours, with reddish brown fur on their forelegs and shoulders. These wolves also live in family-based packs, and prey on deer, beaver and also moose. These are by far the rarest wolves in Ontario and Quebec, and they are also much rarer than eastern coyotes.

Eastern coyotes are the smallest of the large canids. They almost always weigh less than 50lbs, and typically have mixed fur colours, ranging from more blonde, to predominantly grey, to the reddish brown mix of the eastern wolf. Compared to both wolf species, eastern coyotes are shorter, have narrower snouts and chests, and have larger ears relative to their face size. These are the most common large canid in southern Ontario, and they can survive from downtown Toronto to the populated areas of central Ontario, but they also live in mixed forests typically associated with wolves. Their diets are far more flexible than wolves because of their smaller body size, and adaptability to different habitats. They can survive on rodents, amphibians, vegetation, garbage, and rabbits, but some can hunt moose and deer as a family-based pack. Typically, their territories are smaller than those of wolf packs, because territory is often correlated to primary prey density and these animals have a wide range of prey they can survive on. 

Admixed animals can have genetic ancestry from two or three of the canid species, and therefore the Ontario and Quebec canid populations are more accurately described on a continuous spectrum of coyote to wolf, which much diversity possible from animal to animal.

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Why do all three species overlap in Ontario and Quebec?

Grey wolves inhabit most of the unpopulated regions of Canada, and in Ontario and Quebec they are the main large canid in the boreal forest, but some also live or travel in the mixed forests of central Ontario and Quebec. 

Eastern wolves are thought to have once occupied eastern temperate forests in North America, from approximately southern Ontario down into the southern United States. Indeed, the critical endangered red wolf (Canis rufus) is likely the residual population of the American population of eastern wolves. The isolation between eastern wolves and red wolves, in addition to the very different habitats they occupy, have resulted in separate species designations. Starting in the 1600s, European colonizers arriving on the east coast systematically persecuted wolves (and other carnivores) and likely pushed eastern wolves further north than their original range, which is why eastern wolves are concentrated around the Algonquin Provincial Park area today. European colonizers also cleared vast areas of forest and turned it into farmland and eventually, towns and cities.

The functional extinction of wolves and habitat transformation benefited coyotes, which likely arrived in Ontario around a hundred years ago. At that time, these coyotes were few and far between, as were eastern wolves, so they bred when they encountered each other. Consequently, as the coyote population grew through ongoing immigration from the plains and United States, they spread their newly-obtained eastern wolf genetics from coyote to coyote. 

Recent consensus in calling the coyote population in northeastern North America eastern coyotes acknowledges that they are are larger and wolfier than their western counterparts. Because of their larger size, and consequently their ability to hold territories adjacent to eastern wolf packs, eastern coyotes sometimes behave more like wolves when they occupy those habitats and have enough pack members with moose and deer hunting abilities. They are just large enough that they can sometimes act like wolves in certain ecological contexts, but they are too small to truly replace wolves. This plasticity in diet and behaviour makes them particular resilient in the various landscapes of south central Ontario and Quebec.

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The following map, from COSEWIC's 2015 assessment, shows how rare eastern wolves are. The rest of the landscape is saturated by a mix of eastern coyotes, grey wolves, eastern wolves and admixed individuals. 

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What does eastern wolf recovery look like?

This historical and genetic complexity between Ontario’s wolves and coyotes is a large part of the eastern wolf’s recovery journey. 

Not only is this species rare, and less likely to survive in unprotected landscapes, it is also able to breed with both eastern coyotes and grey wolves. Eastern wolves are intermediate in size and to some degree in behaviour, and they act like a genetic bridge, moving genes back and forth from coyotes to grey wolves. 

As a genetic bridge, eastern wolves further muddy the waters because interbreeding between the three species does still happen, especially in unprotected areas where eastern coyotes have been more successful and survive very close to Provincial Parks where eastern wolves are dominant. 

When eastern wolves leave the protected parks, if they survive, they are very unlikely to find another eastern wolf to mate with, and will instead establish mixed packs and breed with the more common canids already on the landscape. The social structure that leads both coyotes and wolves to live in family-based packs coupled with the rarity of eastern wolves means that unprotected areas serve as “sinks” on the landscape. Even if an eastern wolf survives in an area where hunting and trapping are occurring, they get genetically diluted by packing up with non-eastern wolves. So, even though Algonquin Park and other protected areas can be “source” populations, those wolves that venture out of the park are unlikely to help increase the species population because they can’t survive and dominate throughout Ontario. This is an excellent example of the source-sink meta population theory.

There’s no such thing as a large canid vacuum when it comes to Ontario habitats and the diversity of large canid species who can best occupy them. Unprotected areas are therefore saturated by eastern coyote and mixed animal packs. There is never sufficient “open habitat” for eastern wolves to move into to grow the species’ population.

So why do hunting and trapping restrictions need to protect all three canids, if eastern wolves are the only ones at risk and others present a genetic and biological barrier?

For starters, hunters and trappers cannot tell these animals apart on the landscape because of all the interbreeding. Indeed, although hunters and trappers are legally obliged to report the number of animals they have killed in Ontario, there is no category for eastern wolf, so they either have to report a dead animal as a wolf, coyote or wolf/coyote. 
We do not know how many eastern wolves are being killed in Ontario under the current legal hunting and trapping regime, which only restricts wolf and coyote killing in and around 4 Provincial Parks (see figure below). Without genetic assessment of legally harvested animals, no one will ever know. This is a major oversight and highlights the precautionary principle, whereby we should end all hunting and trapping in eastern wolf range if we don’t know how many rare wolves are being killed. 

 

 

 

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The other reason for protecting all coyotes and wolves for the benefit of eastern wolves is that there is no such things as a vacuum, and that killing coyotes “for eastern wolves” is very unlikely to result in stable, open habitat that eastern wolves would quickly occupy. Translocation of entire eastern wolf packs would be inhumane, too expensive and unlikely to work given the social dynamics and cultural learning wolves partake in to survive in their particular territory. Captive breeding programs have been used by politicians to pretend they are working toward recovery of the red wolf in the USA, all the while failing the species on the ground though legislative loopholes.

Coyotes are notoriously one of the most difficult species to “manage”; widespread poisoning, shooting and trapping programs, often subsidized by governments and special interest groups, never result in population reductions long-term. It’s virtually impossible, let alone undesirable, to kill all coyotes in a large area. Coyotes who survive benefit from having less competition over food resources, and then have more young who grow to adulthood when survivors pack up. Wolves are less resilient to systemic persecution. Although they do have similar reproductive responses as coyotes, their survival is more dependent on stable packs to successfully hunt larger prey required to sustain their larger bodies. This is why intensive killing programs can reduce wolf populations for a bit longer than coyote populations, but killing programs never seem to measurably benefit the species they allege to conserve. It does not make ecological or economic sense to kill grey wolves or eastern coyotes in order to conserve eastern wolves.

 

This all might seem like a confusing and disorienting mixture of genetics and legislation but when it comes right down to it, government researchers have been studying these animals long enough to make excellent recommendations for their recovery.

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What has Ontario done for eastern wolves?

The Ontario government has a longstanding history of researching eastern wolves, particularly around Alqonquin Provincial Park, where most eastern wolves are found. Ecological research begun by Dr. Doug Pimlott in the 1950s, and resulted in policy changes that ended the previous staff-led killing programs.

Dr. John and Mary Theberge led further park wolf research in the 1980s and 1990s, which resulted in a buffer of protection from hunting and trapping around the park boundaries in an attempt to keep wolves alive when they ventured out to unprotected deer yards to hunt during the winter months. The park buffer was subsequently expanded in 2001.

Research led by Dr. Brent Patterson and his students at Trent University found that the park wolf population stabilized rather than increased following the park buffer expansion, but had other profound population level impacts. These included a reduction in human-caused mortality, which could impact wolves differently compared to natural mortality because it is highest during breeding season, whereas natural deaths are typically spread out throughout the year. The researchers also found that the park buffer resulted in the restoration of family-based wolf pack structure. 

Dr. Patterson also led research that branched out into the rest of presumed eastern wolf range, toward Georgian Bay. This research elucidated the complexity of canid genetics, and how eastern wolves survive poorly outside parks, compared to other canids on the landscape. 

All of this research provided the foundation for scientific consensus that eastern wolves are genetically distinct and worthy of conservation efforts. In 2015, COSEWIC assessed the eastern wolf as a unique species and recommended that Canada list the species as Threatened under she Species At Risk Act. This uplisting occurred finally in 2024.

The federal species assessment led to Ontario’s COSSARO listing the species as Threatened. Under Ontario’s Endangered Species Act (ESA), Threatened species are afforded immediate and province-wide protection from habitat destruction and from being killed, harmed or harassed. This means that hunting and trapping eastern wolves was immediately illegal. To avoid having to concurrently protect eastern coyotes, admixed animals and grey wolves in this killing ban, Ontario excepted eastern wolves from the ESA, and instead made only small increases in protected areas around three additional parks other than Algonquin where genetic research had located eastern wolves. 

Ontario’s legally mandated Recovery Strategy has been overdue since 2018, and was completely abandoned for a number of years before being taken up once again in 2024. Meanwhile, the ESA’s outlined recovery planning documents and milestones are now up in the air, since Ontario has scrapped the ESA entirely and will soon replace it with a watered-down Act called the Species Conservation Act (SCA). The SCA is essentially a free pass to developers and industry to destroy species at risk habitat using a simplified registration system. Moreover, the SCA won’t require Recovery Strategies, Government Response Statements or Progress Reports, so species at risk stand little chance of recovery. Unlike many species, including birds, eastern wolf is slated to maintain its Threatened status, but it’s unclear how that will benefit them, if at all.​​