The crafty coyote has been blamed for a wide assortment of atrocities — from killing livestock to depleting prized whitetail deer to stealing into suburban neighborhoods and making off with Fido and Fluffy.

So farmers and others cheered when the state House recently passed legislation that would pay hunters and trappers $25 for each coyote they kill.

Yet wildlife experts say coyote bounties have never worked anywhere they’ve been tried, raising questions about whether the $700,000 that Pennsylvania lawmakers voted to spend on a bounty program would be money well spent. The measure has been sent to the Senate for consideration.

No one knows the size of Pennsylvania’s coyote population. In general, wildlife biologists believe that coyote numbers are stable in the rural northern half of Pennsylvania.

But coyotes are gradually increasing in southwestern and especially southeastern Pennsylvania — in Philadelphia and its suburbs — where garbage and even pets can make for easy pickings.

The state’s second-largest predator after the black bear, the coyote has been documented in Pennsylvania since the late 1930s.