Are urban coyotes smarter than their rural cousins?
What, exactly, do they eat?
And just how many city-dwelling coyotes are there now, some two decades after their migration into more populated areas began?
There’s much researchers still don’t know about urban coyotes, according to one biologist who has been working to gather more scientific information on coyotes specifically in the Southern California area.
“We’re seriously lacking in a lot of scientifically based information when it comes to coyote management,” said biologist Niamh Quinn of the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
City governments have been especially slow to recognize what many of their residents already know: Coyotes, once inhabitants of America’s western and central plains, where they shied away from people, have expanded into big cities and suburbs alike, often leaving the scattered remains of household pets as their most visible calling card.
Trying to catch up
“Cities should be proactive rather than being reactive,” she said. “It’s not the ideal situation. Ideally, (all) cities should have the foresight to have coyote management plans.”
Instead, most are scrambling.
The existing data tracked by cities is so scant, she said, that it makes the job much tougher for everyone.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “It blows my mind that nobody is recording this stuff. … This needed to be done five years ago, not now. ”
The city of Los Angeles is no exception. Los Angeles City Councilman Joe Buscaino wants the city’s Department of Animal Services to step up its game when it comes to how to deal with the issue. But a meeting planned for this week was canceled and has yet to be rescheduled.
What’s the coyote population in Los Angeles? “Not a clue,” Quinn said.
But the numbers appear to be rising.
Coyotes have extended their North American territory coast to coast, in virtually all directions, leaving Hawaii as the only state untouched by their presence. But give them time.
Smart, adaptable and with survival skills second to none, coyotes aren’t going away anytime soon, forcing residents to adapt to what has become a new normal in city living. Simple dog walks for those living in affected neighborhoods have turned into a cumbersome juggling act as owners pack up air horns, pepper spray and walking sticks — just in case.
Once cities decide to craft a plan, they find themselves besieged by political activists and sucked up in a confusing whirlwind of conflicting views, often accompanied by high-pitched emotion. Many cities don’t even have good mapping or tracking operations in place, let alone a suitable public education model.
The urban coyote issue is complex, Quinn said, and can quickly become clouded — and heated — by feelings.
“It’s very emotional and political,” she said. “It should be influenced by science and only science, not emotion and politics.”
So where to start?
Quinn, who has a bachelor’s degree in zoology and a doctorate in small mammal ecology from the National University of Ireland, Galway, and other wildlife scientists are busy trying to expand the knowledge database now that several generations of coyotes have evolved to become city dwellers that are quite comfortable living side by side with people.
Debates rage over the best way to deal with the predators.
Take hazing, the practice of scaring off coyotes — using shouts, clapping, horns, pan-banging or water sprays — in an attempt to re-instill their once-natural fear of humans. It’s become the cornerstone of many coyote management plans that strive for what’s called compassionate coexistence with wildlife.
But does it work?
“There’s quite a lot of information on (hazing) bears, but when it comes to coyotes, we don’t know how it works — or even if it works,” said Quinn, who focuses on human-wildlife conflicts in her work and research.
It may work on some coyotes but not others, she said.
“At a certain point, you may get coyotes that are beyond hazing,” she said.
Is coyote behavior changing?
Coyotes historically have been wary and skittish of people. But is that behavior changing among city coyotes as they become more comfortable around people? That’s just one of the areas of inquiry being probed by wildlife researchers who recognize that animal species are constantly in flux.
Whether habituated coyotes can ever be un-habituated, made wary of people again, also is unclear.
Quinn recently wrote a paper, now under peer review, that explores what cities and other agencies are doing to keep reliable records on such things as mapping coyote sightings and pet attacks, including cross streets and other specifics.
Many cities don’t start the record-keeping, Quinn said, until pet killings and coyote complaints reach a fever pitch within a community.
The city of Los Angeles never responded to her request for data for her study, she said. But knowing some basic data is fundamental.
“If you can’t measure, you can’t manage,” Quinn said. “If you don’t know where your conflict is, how can you expect to solve it?”
And the need to figure it out, she said, carries some urgency.
Attacks on humans spike in 2015
While coyote attacks on humans are still considered rare, Los Angeles County saw a noticeable spike in human attacks in 2015.
Los Angeles County Department of Public Health figures show 15 coyote attacks occurred on people countywide, with most occurring in the May-to-October time frame, typically one of the most active seasons for the predators as they raise their pups and need to hunt for more food.
The county reported two coyote attacks on people in 2011, the first year such records were kept, three in 2012, six in 2013, 15 in 2015, and two, so far, in 2016.
Nine of the reported attacks in 2015 took place in the Elysian Park area of Los Angeles, according to documents provided to the Southern California News Group.
The incidents ranged from kids playing when a coyote bit one of them — on three separate occasions — to someone running on a trail when a coyote suddenly approach and bit. Only one of those Elysian Park incidents received any attention in the media at the time.
Earlier incidents involved a coyote biting a person while walking in the San Gabriel Valley in May 2012 and coyotes biting people at a Los Angeles cemetery as well as one person bitten in the hand when he tried to scare a coyote off of his property.
People also are at risk of being bitten when fending off coyote attacks on their dogs or other pets. While rabies is rare in Los Angeles, victims of coyote bites or scratches must endure a painful series of rabies shots afterward as a precaution.
Overall last year in Southern California, Quinn said, 26 coyote attacks on people occurred. But officials say not all attacks are reported, leaving only anecdotal information on which to base policy.
Two fatal human attacks
Only two fatal attacks on humans have been documented: Kelly Keen, a 3-year-old who was dragged off her family’s Glendale property by a coyote in 1981 and was fatally wounded by the time she was rescued by her father, and singer Taylor Mitchell, who died at age 19 of blood loss after coyotes bit her while she was walking on a trail in Eastern Canada in 2009. Mitchell’s death was the first recorded fatality from an attack on an adult.
Animal welfare activists, recalling the lessons of mankind’s many bloody mistakes in trying to control wildlife — coyotes have been in those cross hairs before — argue that it is now up to humans to adapt and find a way to more peacefully and compassionately coexist with the rest of creation. Coyotes, they stress, play an important role in the ecosystem.
More conflicts to come?
Quinn doesn’t believe coyotes have reached their city saturation point yet.
So where will all this be in five years?
“I think we will probably see more conflicts, more bites, because cities aren’t being proactive with (wildlife) management,” Quinn said.
She points to the cities of Irvine and Newport Beach in Orange County as some of the more progressive examples in tackling the issue. Both communities, she said, are open to using an array of options, including trials to see if paintball guns or other nonlethal but more intensive hazing techniques can be effective in problem areas.
“Maybe we can perfect (hazing) or refine it,” Quinn said.
Irvine was motivated to act following an October 2015 coyote attack on a father and his 3-year-old son. The incident was the sixth coyote attack in the Portola Springs neighborhood that year, according to city officials. Five of the other victims were children.
The trapping debate
Some cities, including most recently Torrance, also are willing to use targeted trapping, a lethal response that is strongly and effectively fought by animal-rights proponents. Trapped coyotes cannot be relocated by state law and so must be euthanized.
“We’re aiming to reduce the need for any kind of lethal removal. It’s not the ideal management option,” Quinn said. “I’d like to be able to recommend a nonlethal option.”
But when applied to “hot spots,” she said, trapping and euthanizing a few coyotes seems to send a message, calming coyote behavior for long periods afterward.
The goal of targeted trapping is not to control population. Quinn and others say more coyotes will only fill the vacuum. But, she said, “the hope is that the coyote that comes in is better behaved.”
“Nobody is trying to eradicate coyotes, absolutely nobody,” Quinn said.
What has happened, though, is that “after one or two bold individuals are removed, the complaints go away.”
Coyotes like the city
Quinn dismisses the often-repeated layman’s theory that the coyotes are coming in “from the hills” because of the drought and are starving in the city.
Several generations of coyotes now have been born and raised — and are staying — within city boundaries, she said, apparently finding more resources than they would in rural areas.
“These coyotes are (now originally) from urban neighborhoods,” Quinn said. “They’re potentially just reproducing successful generation after successful generation.”
Resources, she said, are plentiful and easier to come by as people wind up feeding coyotes, both intentionally and unintentionally. Increased sightings may be the result of rising populations or of coyote generations simply becoming more habituated — or, quite likely, both.
Coyote city territories tend to be much smaller, just a half-mile according to some researchers, than they are in rural areas, indicating that food and resources are not hard to come by, Quinn said.
That also likely speaks to a possibly growing urban coyote population.
“If their home range sizes are as small as I think they are, I couldn’t begin to tell you how many coyotes there are in the city of Los Angeles,” she said.
Studies explore diet, intelligence
City life and living next door to people also may be causing a shift in behavior, as coyotes become less nocturnal and more unafraid and at ease trotting onto suburban front lawns, and in diet — fewer mice, rats and rabbits and more household pets — but again, Quinn said, more research is needed.
“It’s not surprising they’d go after well-fed pets; they’re easier to catch” than rabbits, Quinn said. Coyotes are opportunistic feeders.
But, she added, “we’re not really sure what they’re eating.”
Studies are ongoing at two state universities — Long Beach and Fullerton — to learn more about the urban coyote diet, brain capacity, litter sizes and behavior. Other studies, in both Los Angeles and Detroit, are tracking urban coyotes with radio transmitters to help scientists better understand their habits and movements.
Residents, meanwhile, are being advised by cities to keep pets indoors (large dogs aren’t immune from attack), secure fences, and make sure there’s absolutely no food — from bird feeders to compost piles — left outside that could attract coyotes or their prey.
But perfect citywide compliance, to a person, isn’t likely to happen in densely populated areas. And so the conflict between man and his new next-door neighbors isn’t likely to go away anytime soon.
“I’m very much a believer of coexistence,” Quinn said, adding that she loves seeing coyotes — at a distance — in her own neighborhood. “But there’s a point, when you have people being bitten, that’s not coexistence, that’s a health-and-safety issue.”