LANSING, Mich. – Michigan’s coyotes are back to year-round pressure from hunters and trappers after a major policy reversal by state game regulators.

The state Natural Resources Commission voted unanimously on Wednesday on a controversial measure to allow coyotes to be killed all year long, backtracking on a position the state had successfully defended in court. Hunting groups immediately praised the change.

“It empowers landowners, safeguards the wildlife, protects our agricultural community and upholds Michigan’s conservation legacy,” said Merle Jones of the Michigan Trappers and Predator Callers Association.

Previously, Michigan game regulators had established a “quiet period” when coyotes could not be killed from mid-April to mid-July. That’s when coyote pups are vulnerable and not yet weaned from their mother’s milk.

State officials had been motivated by concern that hunters would leave young coyotes orphaned, turning public perception against hunting more broadly. Hunting groups balked at that notion and sued the state to overturn the policy.

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Last June, an Ingham County judge ruled against the hunting groups; an appeal of the decision remains pending.

Since then, the NRC has faced months of calls from hunters to restore coyote hunting opportunities. That’s while animal rights activists urged commissioners to stay the course.

This week the commissioners responded to the pressure from hunters.

Regulators didn’t fully restore year-round hunting and trapping of coyotes, though.

Instead, the NRC expanded “out-of-season” killing of overabundant coyotes or those causing interspecies conflicts on public and private lands, according to the approved state wildlife order.

A coyote hunting and trapping season will run from Oct. 15 through March 1. Then what regulators call a “management season” will cover the remainder of the year, when coyotes could only be killed on private property.

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The new rules will take effect March 1 this year.

The coyote regulation changes also drew opponents to this week’s meeting in Lansing.

Mitchell Nelson of Humane World for Animals nonprofit criticized the language of the wildlife order. He specifically complained that interspecies conflict isn’t defined, nor is a standard for what qualifies as an overabundance of coyotes.

“We don’t even have a current population count of coyotes, so with no accurate additional count of coyotes, no metrics for determining relative coyote abundance and distribution in an area, and no reporting requirement for the killing of coyotes, the concept of addressing overabundance is rendered completely meaningless,” Nelson told the commissioners during public comments.

“The bottom line is that increasing the random and indiscriminate killing of coyotes will not achieve any management objective,” Nelson said.

Game regulators also heard from a state scientist during their meeting.

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Commissioner John Walters asked the furbearer specialist for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources whether it’s believed the change to coyote regulations would have any negative effect on the species population.

“We do not expect this proposed change to have a population level impact on coyotes,” said Cody Norton, DNR wildlife biologist.

Research has shown that more than 70% of coyotes in an area must be killed to reduce the population. As prolific breeders, the animals can recover their population within a year if only 60% are removed.

Rebecca Humphries, NRC chairperson, said the change is meant to address nuisance animals without altering the regular hunting and trapping season.

“The whole concept is to try and keep the integrity of the hunting and trapping season when they’re used as a furbearer species for pelts, and then outside that give people essentially the ability to take the species whenever it’s causing problems for them,” Humphries told MLive.