Superior, Colorado experimenting with "Ammonia Stinkballs" to move Coyotes from heavily traveled human locales.........The smell of Ammonia is similar to that of Coyote urine and causes animals to feel that another Coyote family Group occupies that region, and thus the "Ammonia receiver" Coyote keeps on moving to avoid a conflict with the alleged territory controlling animals---Ingenious if it proves successful long term and hopefully limits lethal force as a Coyote control tool by Fish and Wildlife Agencies

Controls Coyotes With Stinkballs

How ammonia-soaked tennis balls could help reduce human-coyote conflicts in the Front Range.

By Kylee Perez

	A coyote heads into Community Park in Superior, Colo., where controlling them has led the town to try tennis balls soaked in ammonia. Photo by Dave Dugdale/davecolorado.com and used under the Creative Commons license.

Some bad smells in Superior, Colorado, are having some positive effects on the wildlife this winter and spring. The town has been using ammonia-soaked tennis balls to haze coyotes away from more populated areas.
"They don't hurt the coyotes," said Alan McBeath, the Town of Superior's Parks and Recreation Open Space Director, who got the idea for using ammonia-soaked tennis balls to haze other wild animals like raccoons and rodents from the Colorado Division of Wildlife and began using them on coyotes last year. "It's just to get them to move from really heavily populated areas like playgrounds and trailheads."

Humans and coyotes have always had some conflicts in the Front Range because they live near one another, said Jennifer Churchill, spokesperson for the Colorado Division of Wildlife's Northeast region. But there's been an uptick in incidents involving coyotes biting people since 2008 and it's unclear why.

In Superior, coyotes and humans have always lived closely, but in the past several years there have been more reports of coyotes causing problems in town, McBeath said.  Last year Superior officials began using the ammonia-soaked tennis balls during the coyote's mating season, from February to March, when the coyotes are more territorial. The idea is if the tennis balls are put in an area coyotes are likely to den, they smell the ammonia, which smells like urine, and think another animal already marked that den, McBeath said.
Superior is surrounded by county and municipal open space—fields and rolling hills that provide habitat for the coyotes. But the close proximity to people has led to coyotes becoming more comfortable in human spaces.
"Coyotes eat a lot of plants and so in the late winter when plants are not available they start looking for protein." McBeath said. "If they can find a dog bowl full of dog food, yeah they're going to have dinner."
The tennis balls help get coyotes avoid areas where there are a lot of people, but most of the negative interactions with coyotes come from pets being off a leash or left outside at night, McBeath said.
Although the Division of Wildlife will step in if a coyote attacks a human, they don't see attacks on pets as a form of aggression, Churchill said."That's a real tough pill for people to swallow," Churchill said. "A lot of people consider pets their family, but when you let a pet out you have to really be mindful of coyotes."
For Superior, lethal methods are still on the table, but only as a last resort.

"We won't totally rule out lethal control but it hasn't proven to be real effective unless you kill a whole lot of animals," McBeath said. "And I don't think that's the way we want to go."

The tennis balls are just one method used in the Front Range to haze coyotes. The Division of Wildlife also trains local officials to use other creative hazing methods on coyotes, like shooting at them with paintball guns. In addition, both the Division of Wildlife and local officials encourage the public to shout and throw small rocks at coyotes when they see them in communities, Churchill said.

Superior doesn't have any hard data as to whether the tennis balls are working, but reported coyote sightings have gone down in areas where officials have placed the tennis balls, McBeath said. For Superior, the tennis balls aren't a cure-all for preventing conflicts with coyotes.
"It's just a tool to use," McBeath said. "The main thing is to educate the public."