by  V. Paul Reynolds

As former Maine deer biologist Gerry Lavigne reported recently in the SAM News, there has been a flurry of media coverage purporting that Maine’s Eastern coyote is getting larger and taking on more wolf-like characteristics. On TV, Bill Green’s Outdoors featured a segment and the Portland Press Herald carried a story by Diedre Fleming.

Is it true? Is our coyote, which started showing up in the 1940s, evolving into a new canid, one that is worthy of the new, catchy name, Coywolf?