"For a little more than the past two years(2017-present), National Park Service researchers and volunteers in Los Angeles collected coyote scat at 27 sites, most of them in LA, including spots coyotes frequent in Griffith Park, Boyle Heights, Eagle Rock, Frogtown, Beverly Hills, Culver City and Baldwin Hills"............"In all, the research team collected and dissected more than 3,200 samples.........Investigating their diet is one part of a larger NPS coyote study from the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, dubbed the L.A. Urban Coyote Project"........."The overall goal is to better understand how the estimated 5,000 Los Angeles Coyote population has managed to carve out such a comfortable spot in the densely human populated, urban ecosystem we share together".........."The research reveals that in the city of Los Angeles and western northwest suburbs(1000 Oaks), the Coyote diet consists of----Read as City % first figure and suburb % 2nd figure): Human and pet foods 26% 8%,,,,, Rabbits 18% 48%..... Pocket gophers 9% 13%,,,,,, Ornamental fruits 26% 24%,,,,, Insects 19% 15%,,,,, Domestic cats 20% 4%"............."The bottom line is that City dwelling Coyotes depend heavily on human created food(garbage/pet food and cats) whereas suburban Coyotes lean toward rabbits and rodents, with both city and suburban canids loving fruit"............"From 1996-2004, the (NPS) biologists also studied coyote populations in Thousand Oaks, Agoura Hills and Calabasas in suburban Los Angeles and Ventura Counties".........."This study involved the capture and radio-collaring of 128 coyotes".......... "Coyotes were found to be present and in relatively high densities in almost all of the remaining natural habitat fragments throughout the study area"............."Although coyotes will visit the surrounding urban areas, they were found to prefer spending time in the natural open space"............"However, many of the remaining fragments around Thousand Oaks, Agoura Hills and Calabsas are too small to support a family group of coyotes, and therefore these groups must include multiple fragments within their home range"..........."To use these fragmented patches, coyotes are forced to travel through developed areas, including crossing roadways of various sizes".........."Some habitat fragments have become separated by large networks of urbanization so that even home and apartment dwellers not on the edge of natural areas may come into contact with coyotes as they move between these natural habitat patches"..........."However most of the coyotes that occur in these patches are rarely seen by the citizens living around them"..........."They tend to be very secretive, which has allowed them to persist in these urbanized areas"............... "In this suburban region of Los Angeles, Coyote diet consisted mainly consist of native fruits and small mammals such as rabbits, woodrats, and mice"..........."These suburban coyotes only occasionally utilized human food sources, most predominantly ornamental or non-native fruits which can constitute up to 25% of their diet".........."Other items such as trash, pet food and domestic pets may also be consumed on occasion, but constitutes a very small percentage of coyote diets in this study area"......... "The number one source of mortality in the study area was vehicle collisions".......... "Roads act as a barrier to movement and gene flow, as well as a direct source of mortality". The surprising find was that the next most important source of mortality for coyotes in the study area are rat poisons"............."Canids (a.k.a. dog species) are very vulnerable to the effects of anticoagulant rat poisons, the most commonly used method of rodent control worldwide"............"Coyotes are likely secondarily exposed to the poisons, meaning that they are consuming the small rodent pest species that people are targeting with the poisons"............"These poisons have a delayed action so that once a coyote eats the poisons, it can take up to 10 days for them to die"

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2019/03/21/urban-coyote-poop/&ct=ga&cd=CAEYACoTMjEzNDgzOTM4Njg4ODg2Mjk4MTIaZjUwOWE2YjQ0ZTNkYzY4OTpjb206ZW46VVM&usg=AFQjCNEvfANvkQZiSNPT7bRq7Jq7Jf9h6w

Los AngelesScat party: To unlock the secrets of urban coyotes, biologists turn to poop

Ryan Fonseca 

Thursday, March 21, 2019

 Urban Coyotes exist easily with humans in Los Angeles-Photo
National Park Service

LOS ANGELES – First off, yes, this is a story about poop, which we all know is funny.

So please get all the snickers, chuckles and chortles out of your system now, because this poop story has a valuable lesson about how Los Angeles residents share this wildland-urban interface with coyotes – and why it’s our fault when things go wrong.

When it comes to Angelenos’ coyote troubles, Justin Brown, a biologist with the National Park Service, said he’s heard it all.

Graduate student Danielle Martinez works under a fume hood to examine the stomach contents of urban coyotes at Cal State Fullerton. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times

Left, stomach contents of urban coyotes are put into labeled petri dishes. Right, what is left of a ground squirrel is seen while examining the stomach contents at Cal State Fullerton. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

“I have people coming in telling me that their neighbor’s feeding them, some where the coyote’s coming up behind them, chasing them and their little dog as they’re walking down the street, to some people where there’s just a coyote that sleeps in their yard every day,” he told LAist. “If you’re having conflicts in your area, they’re coming into your neighborhood for a reason. There’s some sort of resource they’re finding.”

And Brown, fellow scientists and local nature fans investigated those reasons by looking at coyote scat.

For a little more than two years, NPS researchers and volunteers collected scat at 27 sites, most of them in LA, including spots coyotes frequent in Griffith Park, Boyle Heights, Eagle Rock, Frogtown, Beverly Hills, Culver City and Baldwin Hills.

In all, the research team collected and dissected more than 3,200 samples, which literally is a crapload.

Coyote in the largest downtown natural park in the USA(Griffith Park in Burbank, Calif)

A few of the sample sites were in more suburban and wildland pockets in the Conejo Valley, including Thousand Oaks, “to see if the amount and types of food vary based on a certain level of urbanization,” Brown said.

Despite having coexisted with them in Southern California for so long, much about urban coyotes remains a mystery, Brown said, such as pack size or even how many live in the city.

Investigating their diet is just one part of a larger NPS coyote study from the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, dubbed the L.A. Urban Coyote Project. The overall goal is to better understand how they’ve managed to carve out such a comfortable spot in the hybrid ecosystem we share.

How do you study scat?

It’s not as simple as finding droppings and grabbing a pair of gloves. Every coyote scat sample gets put through a process that basically eliminates the poopiest parts of the poop, Brown said. First the scat is brought to NPS scientists, who bake it for sterilization. The sample then is placed in a little nylon bag and gets washed and dried.

Fur and whiskers also offer clues about urban coyotes. (Photo courtesy of National Park Service)

“You wash it to get rid of all that extra stuff, that way when you go to dissect it, you don’t just have lots of dirt,” Brown said.

After that, the poop is ready for inspection – and it’s time to throw a party.

NPS has hosted volunteer events where members of the public learn to dissect and catalog what they find in the coyote poop samples, aptly called scat parties.

Volunteer Merri Huang first heard about the project and the call for volunteers in a KPCC story and signed up. She said she has been a “a backyard naturalist” since moving to LA in 1980 (it probably helps that she has a master’s degree in field biology).

“(I) was amazed at the number of species in my own backyard,” she said, “and front yard, where I’ve seen coyotes off and on for years.”

Howling coyote!  Coyotes are well known for their howling songs, often heard at night in both urban and natural areas around the Santa Monica Mountains.  Song is important for communication between coyotes.  Photo taken by Jared Hughey

At a typical scat party, Huang said, you check in, get coffee and a bagel, then grab a sample and get to work. Volunteers place their samples on paper towels and start picking out the contents into separate piles: animal parts, plants, fruits, insects and trash. Some volunteers don’t even bother wearing gloves, NPS spokeswoman Ana Beatriz Cholo said, adding that ‘gloves are kind of annoying,” and fur can stick to them.

Volunteers verify or correct their findings using matching samples, field guides and the internet, but also get help from Brown and other scientists.

“People are curious. They want to know what these animals are doing there,” Brown said. “This is the way they can answer some of those questions by coming and seeing.”

NPS scientists even had to turn down some poop eager volunteers wanted to bring in from backyards and other places, since they needed to focus on specific sites for consistent data-gathering.

A photo of a coyote taken in Cheseboro Canyon in the Simi Valley.  Photo taken by Jared Hughey.

“My favorite part was sharing science with others who were curious, perpetual learners, collaborating towards a future goal,” Huang said. “It’s fun to be with people who share my excitement about identifying a Dixie cup, or a rabbit’s tooth, or a reptile scale, a beetle’s wing, or even a microchip in a scat.”

After a bit of work, lunch is provided, then it’s back to more poop.

Volunteers are responsible for the vast majority of collections and dissections, Brown said, and he credited them for their hard, important work.

Unraveling the mysteries of feces

For Brown, who has been studying coyotes for nearly 20 years, what really stood out was how much fruit local coyotes eat. Most of it isn’t fruit humans throw out – the source is non-native, ornamental plants ubiquitous across LA. Some of the fruits commonly found in coyote scat included purple figs from ficus trees, pyracantha berries and dates from our iconic (but non-native) palm trees.

“Most people don’t even realize they eat fruit,” Brown said. “The coyotes definitely take advantage of them.”

Urban coyotes are also eating a lot of human and pet food, which was found in more a quarter of the samples. Other common meals are rabbits, cats, insects and gophers.

Brown believes most of the cat remains found in urban coyote scat point to feral cat colonies in those areas, which typically means someone in a neighborhood is feeding those feral cats. Of course, coyotes do sometimes get to small dogs, house cats and other pets.

Preliminary data from the study showed a notable difference between the diets of urban coyotes and those in the Conejo Valley. Most of those more suburban/rural coyotes munch on rabbits, fruit, rodents and insects, generally consuming far less human-generated garbage.

Brown noted that resources aren’t dwindling in the more wild areas where coyotes live, though “we’ve definitely pushed more and more into their habitat.”

Coyotes are just expert life hackers.

“They’re very good opportunists. They take advantage of resources that are available,” he said, adding that coyotes also are good at making pups.

“Generally, if there’s more food, there’s going to be more coyotes,” he said. “If the landscape can support them, they’re going to be there.”

But coyotes don’t stick to just the food pyramid, as scat inspectors found over the course of the study. Some of the more bizarre items found in their poop were baseball leather, stuffed-animal parts, a finger puppet, bits of broken glass, a condom and, ironically, a dog-poop bag.

Whiskers tell us even more

A coyote’s poop alone doesn’t give the full scope of their diet. A lot of easily digestible materials, including meat and dairy products, gets absorbed in the magical process of digestion. But there are other ways to see what coyotes are eating.

That’s where Cal State Northridge graduate student Rachel Larson lends her expertise. She has a bachelor of science degree in zoology, is pursuing a master’s in biology and is one of the lead volunteers on the NPS urban coyote project, focusing on diet study

“A delicious Egg Sausage McMuffin isn’t easy to recognize in poop,” Larson said. “However, in the United States, most of the food we consume has corn in it in some way.”

That corn contains noticeably higher amounts of carbon-13, an isotope that weighs more than a typical carbon atom. So when a coyote eats food with lots of corn or its by-products in it, that carbon-13 gets absorbed into their bodies, including their whiskers.

Larson runs collected coyote whiskers through a mass spectrometer, which allows her to detect the amount of that isotope, showing her how much human food coyotes are eating. And often, it’s a lot.

“What was surprising was how much urban coyotes relied on human garbage … it constituted 80 percent of their diet!” she said. “We would be missing a significant amount of human food if we just used scat analysis alone.”

What can be done

So, LA’s most urban coyotes are getting a majority of their food from garbage left by humans. And if they’re not eating our trash, many are eating fruit that falls from trees and plants that humans introduced to the region.

“We provide a huge amount of their food to them,” Brown said. “We need to realize that we are responsible for them being in our neighborhoods and we need to be dealing with that situation if we don’t want them there.”

The problem with consuming garbage around homes and business's where people
put out rat poison........Photo of a coyote that died of anticoagulant poisoning.  This picture is graphic but is the bottom line for the effects these poisons have on some species. Outwardly, the coyote looks healthy and unharmed. However, when the animal is dissected for autopsy, we find excessive amounts of free-blood in the abdominal and thoracic cavities. In this picture, the blood has spilled out of the coyote when it was cut open.---10 days after ingesting the poison, the coyote can die.

And now that researchers have a good sense of what coyotes are eating, Brown hopes local residents can be educated and empowered to reduce the unnatural resources the animals take advantage of.

For starters, Angelenos can remove food sources, which could mean getting rid of ornamental fruit-bearing trees or “being very adamant about making sure there’s no fruit hitting the ground,” he said. That also means securing and reducing garbage, keeping streets free of litter and not leaving pet food – or pets – outside.

But “the worst kind of feeding” that happens is when humans intentionally feed coyotes, Brown said. He has seen people “giving resources we shouldn’t be providing,” by leaving pet food bowls out for wildlife, throw leftover food to coyotes in parks – even tossing burgers to them. That near-hand-feeding behavior is dangerous for coyotes, and potentially for people, too.

“The coyotes start getting to where they expect food directly from somebody,” he said, “so they come up to people and then they end up getting a little too pushy and end up biting somebody.”

Brown also recommended Angelenos look for ways to reduce cover by removing some vegetation and keeping yards free of debris, allowing coyotes fewer places to hide.

About 100 scat samples still need to be dissected, Brown said, which should be done in the next couple weeks. After that, he and his team will write up their findings and work to get them published in a scientific journal.

Their findings also will be used locally by the National Park Service to educate the public about coyote behavior and what steps can be taken to deter them from coming in neighborhoods.

But, as Brown noted, it’s impossible for every part of LA to be coyote-free.

“Coyotes are going to live amongst us,” he said. “It’s going to occur. They’ve already adapted and they can live quite well in our neighborhoods and in our urban environments.”
------------------------------------------------------
https://www.nps.gov/samo/learn/news/two-year-coyote-scat-project-ends-with-over-3-000-specimens-collected.htm

NEWS RELEASE

Two Year Coyote Scat 

Project Ends with

 Over 3,000 Specimens

 Collected

Subscribe  | What is RSS

Date: March 8, 2019 Anna Beatrice Cholo 

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. -- A two-year National Park 
Service research study of scat, 

aka poop, that focused on what coyotes eat in urban 
Los Angeles, is culminating with

 a “scat party” Saturday morning at the Audubon 
Center at Debs Park (March 9). 

Volunteers will dissect the final samples and then
 celebrate their participation in the

 project with tacos.

The project may be the first time a coyote’s diet
is being studied in downtown Los Angeles,
 and it is expected to yield information about the
 basic ecology of urban coyotes, which it is
 hoped will assist residents and policymakers
 in making informed decisions regarding coyote
management.

Volunteers and interns were at the heart
 of
 this study, said National Park Service
biologist
 Justin Brown who led the research.

“Without them, we could not have collected
 and dissected more than 3,200 scats,” Brown
said. “They were out there picking up scat
 along predetermined scat lines from Beverly
 Hills
 to Boyle Heights, Westlake to Lincoln Heights.
 They put a lot of time into this work.”

To compare diets, researchers also collected
scat throughout the Conejo Valley suburbs,
 which includes the city of Thousand Oaks,
 and the adjacent natural habitat. They attended
 trainings and analysis workshops to learn
 proper scat collection procedures that were held
 at the Audubon Center at Debs Park. Some
also volunteered for the analysis team that
 helped examine the scat contents, a one- to
 two-day commitment per month.

The main question posed by the study is: what 
do urban coyotes, who deal with concrete,

traffic, people, and fewer natural areas, actually
eat relative to their suburban cousins?
Thus far, it seems like Los Angeles coyotes’
favorite meals consist of fruits from ornamental
trees, rabbits, insects, cats, pocket gophers, and
 human foods that were not disposed o
f properly. Analyses are not complete, but the table
 below gives a preliminary idea of what
coyotes in the different regions are eating.

What are coyotes eating in the City of Los
 Angeles and in the suburbs of L.A.

	City/suburb
Human and pet foods	26%  8%
Rabbits	18%  48%
Pocket gophers	9%    13%
Ornamental fruits	26%    24%
Insects	19%    15%
Domestic cats	20%       4%

During monthly scat parties, community
 scientists dissected “clean” scat that had
 been
 thoroughly washed and “baked.”

“In fact, the scat is so clean that at some
 stage you have to ask, is this even scat anymore?”
 joked Brown.

The volunteers were tasked

 with dumping the bag’s contents onto a paper towel
 and then
separating insect parts from animal parts and plant
 parts from the human related materials.
 Most do the work without gloves because it didn’t
 take long for them to learn how gloves
are kind of annoying. Animal hair tends to stick to the
gloves, Brown said.

Identifying what the items are is part of the learning
process, and the volunteers were
expected to try to figure it out for themselves first.
When finished, they would call over
a biologist who would then help them identify the
 item. Everything got marked and a few
 days later, the data were inputted to a database.

Another aspect of the research project involved
 collecting whiskers from coyotes that
were recovered as road kill or captured as part of
 a broader study of coyotes. The
National Park Service launched the urban coyote 
study in May of 2015 in order to
 better understand how coyotes are surviving in
 one of the most intensely developed
 cities in the nation.

Using the whiskers, researchers could do a stable
 isotope analysis to examine
 carbon nitrogen ratios. Scat is great for detecting 
hard parts in the diet remains
 like bones and

seeds, but it’s not a good source of information for
 identifying human foods that are highly
 digestible, like hamburgers and bread. Researchers
are collecting these data to better
understand what resources coyotes are using across
the landscape, in areas with high to
 low levels of urbanization, and to provide insight
 into how coyotes are persisting in some
 of the most urban areas of Los Angeles.

The results of the study will be analyzed in the coming
weeks and biologists expect to
submit the results for publication this year.

Scientists at Santa Monica Mountains National
Recreation Area have been studying
carnivores in and around the Santa Monica
Mountains since 1996.

Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation
 Area (SMMNRA) is the largest urban 
national park in the country, encompassing
 more than 150,000 acres of mountains 
and coastline in Ventura and Los Angeles 
counties. A unit of the National Park Service,
 it comprises a seamless network of local, 
state and federal parks interwoven with
 private lands and communities. As one of 
only five Mediterranean ecosystems in 
the world, SMMNRA preserves the rich 
biological diversity of more than 450 animal 
species and 26 distinct plant communities. 
For more information, visit www.nps.gov/samo.