We have all seen it, news articles on human wildlife conflicts with coyotes. These are never good interactions as most of the time coyotes are attacking someone’s pet. Sometimes you see videos of a coyote catching a squirrel and people get mad at the coyote for doing so. Why? He has to catch his own meal. He would be doing the same thing in the woods where you can’t see them. This article studied the effects on anthropogenic foods on urban and rural coyotes and tried to find a correlation with the coyotes that caused conflict and their anthropogenic food consumption and overall health.

Urban coyotes that were studied came from Edmonton and Calgary in Alberta, Canada. Rural coyotes came from Elk Island National Park and Ministik Lake. Elk Island National park is a fenced park and Ministik is a bird sanctuary closed to the public. Scat collection was a way they were studying food choices by coyotes in all locations. Edmonton produced 531 scats and Calgary produced 484 scats. Calgary was collected between 2006-2007 and Edmonton was collected between 2009-2012. I am not sure why they were collected this many years apart and I believe they should have been collected more closely in time. Cities can change a fair amount in 6 years and that can change the diet of these carnivores. Elk Island had 1221 scats and once again a big time difference; these were from 1994-2000. There was no scat collected in Minisitk but collected from Wasbasca, a nearby town that allowed the public to enter. In my opinion, none of this collection seems very consistent as many things can change in that wide of a time period. Hair collection was another way data was collected. It turns out you can understand an animals diet by examining different parts of their guard hairs. Hair was from live-trapped animals or from deceased animals via car collisions or hunting.

The results were similar to what one would expect. Urban coyotes had a more diverse diet than rural coyotes. Shocker right? But urban coyotes did contain more species diversity in their scat than did rural coyotes. This is likely due to pets and other urban-centered critters that have better success living in urban environment than a rural environment. Urban coyotes that were reported for conflict had diets that contained more of anthropogenic food sources, had a lower body class score and more likely had mange than rural coyotes. None of the rural coyotes reported appeared to be unhealthy. Contrary to what the media shows us, coyotes predated less on pets than other mammal classes. Urban coyotes predated more on smaller mammals than rural coyotes did but predated much less on larger mammals than rural coyotes do. Out of the urban coyotes that were reported were involved in a human-wildlife conflict, all of them showed signs of low body score or have a manage infestation. Rural coyotes reported in human-wildlife conflict all appeared healthy. Urban coyotes reported had a much lower protein intake and higher anthropogenic intake than rural coyotes.

Urban coyotes were shown to have a much higher diversity in caloric consumption than did rural coyotes. They proved that pets are one of the lowest predated on groups by coyotes no matter in urban or rural locations. Coyotes in an urban environment that were reported had lower quality health and were more likely to be to weak to hunt properly or were sick with mange. I was very intrigued in this research with my business being heavily revolved around human-wildlife conflict. Coyotes is a very common call I experience and it is likely they are feeding on pet chickens that are free ranging or just roaming through the yard. Rarely are they seen trying to attack any pets. I would have preferred that their data collection been closer together in time period. Having a range from 1994-2012 is a large time period and lots can change in an area resulting in change to a species’ diet and actions.

1. M. Murray et al., Greater consumption of protein‐poor anthropogenic food by urban relative to rural coyotes increases diet breadth and potential for human–wildlife conflict. Ecography. 38, 1235–1242 (2015).