Overview

Urban coyote sightings are becoming more and more common and are eliciting attention from every direction. Coyotes will shift their hunting patterns if they commonly visit an urban area. They do so by becoming more nocturnal and coming out during times of the night that has less human activity. Urban carnivores, such as coyotes, are likely to visit residential yards for a multitude of reasons. One reason can be due to individual health. Urban wildlife have began associating humans with food, anthropogenic food that is, and this is causing an increase in human wildlife interactions/conflicts. A sick coyote is definitely more likely to search for an easy meal and urban residents often have just what the sick animal is looking for. When an animal is sick, they are said to have a greater acceptance of risk, which can explain why sick animals are more willing to approach objects that a healthy carnivore would be afraid of. Mange has been the most common disease that has been noted from previous studies in sick urban coyotes. Hypothesis for this study was that coyotes use residential yards that contain anthropogenic food sources but also contain cover to conceal them and can vary amongst their body condition. The study took place in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The coyotes were trapped using padded foothold traps. They were then collared and released. They created 7 landcover types and 4 land use categories to understand a coyotes habitat selection. They also decided to research the time of day that coyotes were entering these residential areas to understand the correlation between human activity and coyote activity.

Results

Healthy coyotes were 4 times more likely to avoid residential areas than sick coyotes even though all but 2 coyotes avoided urban settings. Coyotes tended to avoid residential areas more during the daytime hours than at night. Backyards with fences were 67% less likely to be selected by coyotes, 22% more likely to contain a food source, 3.3% of yards preferred had more cover and 1.3% had more fallen fruit. Diseased coyotes did tend to use residential areas more during the daytime hours than healthy coyotes. Sick coyotes were using anthropogenic housing more frequent then healthy coyotes. With these results, it led the researchers to believe that human-carnivore interactions are more likely to be caused by a sick animal trying to live an easier life than a healthy specimen.

Implications

This study can help explain many reasons one may be seeing an urban carnivore. Some key components to take away from this study is ensuring all trash is kept up and locked up, yards are fenced, bushes are trimmed, decks are sealed off and compost piles are not smelly or wide open. Some things that I think should be taken into consideration is the time of the year. Certain times of the year can change habits. In a time of the year where there is less natural food, you may be more willing to see an urban predator. During spring when young is born for all species, it is likely that there will be less activity seen in an urban environment. Also, location can play a big role in this. This study was only focused in one city in Canada. Different parts of North America can contain coyotes with different habits and mindsets. Chicago is notorious for having coyotes seen during the daytime. They have gotten used to people and there is loads of anthropogenic food sources there.

Source

M. H. Murray, C. C. St. Clair, Predictable features attract urban coyotes to residential yards. The Journal of Wildlife Management. 81, 593–600 (2017).