Coexisting with Coyotes in Suburbia--Suburban New York City Westchester County residents experienced Coyote attacks on children this past Summer and our friend Barbara Lukowski sent this to me today from a September. 2010 meeting which featured our friends and Coyote Biologists Roland Kays and Daniel Bogan................a familiar and spot-on recommendation for tolerance of these intelligent and ecosystem beneficial predators................simultaneously urging us to make coyotes fear us without killing them

Coexisting with Coyotes in Suburbia: Wildlife Experts Weigh In

 

By Lizzie Hedrick and Nik Bonopartis    Recent coyote attacks in Rye and Rye Brook, a school lock-out in Yorktown and countless reports of coyotes roaming across backyards in Westchester have put local authorities on high alert and local people on edge.
Amid the panic this summer over sightings and attacks, rumors and misinformation about the animals were repeated in press releases andtelevision reports, and wildlife researchers say they want to correct common misconceptions.Coyotes, they say, aren't going anywhere – and we should learn to live with them.

Four wildlife experts—Roland Kays, Mark Weckel, Daniel Bogan and Kevin Clarke—presented their research on eastern coyotes Friday at Pace University in Pleasantville in a public forum titled: "Coyotes in Suburbia."

More than 100 wildlife experts, law enforcement officers and citizens from all parts of the county attended the lecture. One major theme of the symposium was that coyote populations in Westchester seem "to be rising only slightly or leveling off," according to Dr. Roland Kays, curator of Mammals at the New York State Museum. "What we have noticed, though, is that they do appear to be spreading with greater frequency into urban and developed suburban areas."There is no established method for counting coyote populations, and wildlife experts have debated the matter for decades. Methods include surveys from the air, analyzing coyote feces, driving around at night with spotlights and counting the animals from the road, den surveys, and "catch and release."

Media reports of coyote activity, population estimates and assertions that coyotes are "on the rise" rely on anecdotal evidence. The U.S. government spends more than $30 million a year trying to trap and kill coyotes to reduce their population.

A fact sheet by New York's Department of Environmental Conservation says 45,000 coyotes were "reported" by hunters and trappers in a 24-year span from 1979 to 2003. The report sources its information to an academic paper focused on the cost to agriculture -- and not attacks on humans. The animals weren't tagged, and the data collection didn't have a mechanism for dealing with duplicates -- if 10 trappers saw the same coyote in one week, that animal was counted 10 times.

The coyote is not native to this region, Kays said. According to his analysis of fossil maps, coyotes lived strictly in the Great Plains region and the western United States until the early 1900s."Between 1900 and 1941, there were 26 recorded coyote sightings in the Northeast," Kays continued. "And from the 1940s on, we see a clear colonization of eastern coyotes."Kays' research shows that eastern coyotes are about five to ten pounds heavier than their western cousins and genetically have more in common with wolves."There is strong evidence for a coyote-wolf hybrid," Kays said, pointing to slides that depicted eastern coyotes' long, wide skulls. "We found the genetic makeup of animals we tested to be about 10 to 15 percent wolf and the rest coyote—we believe this makes them more adapted to deer hunting." 

According to Kays, the hybrid "coywolf" populations colonized about five times faster than purebred. Yet he and his team also observed that there was relatively little genetic diversity among eastern coyotes, suggesting that a few individual animals sit atop the family tree of nearly every coyote in the east.Though Kays and his colleagues had also hypothesized that coyotes might have cross-bred with feral or domesticated dogs, they found little evidence to support the theory. "It seems the coyotes would rather attack the dogs than mate with them," he said.

Mark Weckel—a PhD student at City University and director of research and land management at theMianus River Gorge in Bedford—spoke next, elaborating on his studies of coyote-human interactions."When I searched 'coyote' in Google images, I came up with only one photo of an intimidating, aggressive-looking animal," Weckel said. "And yet nearly every article I've read recently about coyotes has published that photograph." Weckel said there are generally three underlying reasons for animal-human conflict: expanding animal population, expanding human population into an animal's range, or a change in philosophy by the people in a wildlife-populated area."We see this with animals such as deer in Westchester," Weckel said, citing locals' previous push for a ban on deer hunting only to cry out to have it repealed a few years later.  

According to Weckel, animal-human conflict is something that can't be dealt with by professionals in one field alone. "It must be a community effort," he said. The first step to preventing conflict, he said, is predicting the areas that have the highest likelihood of human-coyote interaction. Employing the help of student interns, Weckel and his team at the Mianus River Gorge created surveys to distribute to school-age children to fill out with their families.

"Basically, we asked people throughout Westchester whether they had seen coyotes in their neighborhoods and with what frequency," he explained. "We then took half of the surveys and used them to generate a map of where the highest concentrations of sightings were. Not surprisingly, coyotes were much more prevalent in areas closer to forests or grasslands and further from development."The scientists later overlaid the remaining surveys, observing that there was an 80 percent correlation between the two groups, which to them showed statistical significance.Yet Weckel said the map was never intended to show where there was the highest probability of an attack—it was simply a research tool to help start public outreach campaigns convincing locals to discontinue behavior such as leaving garbage outside, feeding deer or tethering vulnerable dogs outdoors.  

The next component of Weckel's research was to gauge human perception of coyotes throughout Westchester County."This study revealed that the lower the probability of human-coyote interaction, the higher the probability locals will have a negative perception of the animals," he said. "I truly wish some of this research had been presented and published before the incidents in Rye, when the public's perception and discourse became overwhelmingly negative."Weckel ended his presentation arguing that the suburban coyote population should be tolerated to some degree, for no better reason than to help control the number of white-tail deer. "But problem coyotes should not be tolerated," he added, asking rhetorically, "But what constitutes a 'problem coyote'? Is seeing one in the woods a problem? Is it a problem when one is sighted in a public park in the middle of the night?…In broad daylight?"Weckel called for open conversation on coyote management. "We need to find middle ground between a 'kill-them-all' attitude and allowing coyotes to attack people in their yards. As researchers, we won't continue sharing our insights if the objective is to kill every unwanted coyote."

The final speaker was Daniel Bogan, a PhD student at Cornell University, who specializes in coyote behavior patterns. Through a behavioral ecology study intended to monitor individual animals with tracking devices, Bogan shed light on some of the greatest mysteries regarding local coyotes.Bogan captured 41 individual coyotes—none rabid—and tagged them with radio-tracking devices. Within a few years, he observed that 15 had died within the range of where they were captured, four had wandered out of the region and died, 17 were missing—Bogan surmises that they were hit by cars destroying the tracking devices—and only five were alive."We saw a very low survival rate of 26 percent," Bogan said.What does this mean? Bogan interpreted the field study to signify that coyote populations, while clearly present, may not actually be growing. "Of course, we couldn't track the number that entered the area, but we know quite a few left and many died," he said.Bogan also analyzed research collected from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to put coyote sightings into perspective. "From May, 2005 to April, 2009 the DEC recorded 447 reports of coyote sightings in New York state," Bogan said. The largest concentration of calls came from Westchester County."It's important to note, though, that in order for a report to be filed, a person had to have been present and alarmed enough to make a call," Bogan cautioned. "The number does not represent a random sample, because there could have been many more animals north of Westchester which never get reported."

And according to Weckel's research, there should be more coyotes in less-developed areas north of Westchester and Rockland Counties.  

Kevin Clarke, a wildlife biologist at the state Department of Environmental Conservation, joined the researchers for a brief question-and-answer session after the presentations, expounding predominantly upon the best practices locals can follow to avoid distressing human-coyote interactions.

"Coyotes are not afraid of people anymore and we have to recondition them to be," Clarke said. "If you see one on your porch, don't simply open a window and say, 'Go away!' Instead, spray it with a hose or a can of pepper spray or throw a hard object at it." 

Though the audience sat rapt, furiously scribbling notes throughout the symposium, they set down their pads to applaud when Clarke said: "Coyotes are opportunistic and potentially dangerous animals, but we don't kill things just because we don't like them."