Coyote expansion is erasing a threatened species.

The eastern wolf — called the Algonquin wolf in Ontario's listing — is Threatened under Ontario's Endangered Species Act, reclassified from special concern in June 2016. Ontario's population is estimated at 350 to 1,000 mature individuals, concentrated in Algonquin Provincial Park and surrounding townships, with small isolated populations around Killarney, the Kawartha Highlands and Queen Elizabeth II Wildlands.

Eastern wolves interbreed with coyotes readily, unlike grey wolves in the west, which kill them instead. Genetic surveys find eastern coyotes forming an extensive hybrid swarm, with every sampled animal showing some level of admixture. Eastern wolf alleles turn up in admixed coyotes along the northeastern shores of Lake Huron and Lake Ontario, and eastern wolf genetic variation thins out with distance from the provincial parks. Interbreeding can't save an endangered species whose numbers are so fragile in comparison to our out of control coyote explosion.

The wolves aren't only being outcompeted. They're being erased.

Sources:

Ontario.ca, Eastern Wolf — https://www.ontario.ca/page/eastern-wolf COSSARO Eastern Wolf evaluation, 2022 — https://cossaroagency.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/COSSARO-Eastern-Wolf-March-2022_final.pdf Monzón et al., coyote-wolf-dog admixture — https://datadryad.org/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.1bh5q