♪♪
-I have a high respect for coyotes.
They are so adaptive.
-I just think coyotes are fascinating in general.
-I just find them to be amazing animals.
They're super intelligent, able to live in different places.
-This is an animal that has had to outsmart
larger predators as their population expanded.
And then they've slowly started to go from this more wild rural animal
to do exactly what they do in all other metropolitan areas.
-In the early 1900s,
coyotes essentially lived between the Rockies and the Mississippi.
Now, they're found, you know, from northern
British Columbia and into Alaska, all the way down to Mexico, coast to coast.
-Coyotes have probably been here for half a century or quite a bit more.
-First, Coyote was documented King County in 1937 in Enumclaw.
-We hear a lot of you know, it's urban sprawl.
And I think that's true for many, many wildlife species,
but not for coyotes, because they're coming to us.
They're coming to where the food is.
♪♪
-They’re prey generalists, so they can eat lots of different things.
There's some research going on right now looking at that actual question.
-The Seattle Coyote Study is looking at the diet and genetics of urban coyotes
throughout the greater Seattle area.
So we use all noninvasive methods.
So mainly just looking for scat on trails and whatnot.
And then we use a process called dietary metabarcoding, which basically looks
at the genetics of prey items within each of these scats
and IDs it to species. That allows us to kind of understand what vertebrates
and what plants
that these coyotes are generally eating across a long period of time.
-Having the scientific evidence, this is how many hundreds
or thousands of coyote samples we've taken and from these areas
of the county or Western Washington, I mean, that tells us a lot.
- Mainly they're eating rabbits.
They've got some chicken in their diet.
They've got they do have a little bit of cat.
Everyone always thinks they're only eating cats.
Not true.
-It's more likely that cats are hit by cars, as far as the statistics out there.
But if someone calls us and says, you know,
I've got my cat outside, is it possible that coyotes could take it?
I can't say “No.”
-I can tell you from looking at scats, there's a lot of blackberry in there.
But I've also seen them eating thimbleberries and blueberries.
They'll eat a lot of cherries as well.
Small mammals like voles and rats that cause,
infrastructure destruction or spread diseases and things like that.
- To the extent that coyotes are focusing on those types
of prey items, it can be really beneficial to human communities.
(coyote howling)
-Coyotes have a very
intricate communication system.
(coyote howling)
-Those yips and barks are not
“I'm coming for you.”
(coyote howling)
-They vocalize just to keep social contact within the family group.
-Oftentimes that's just them saying, “Hey...
(coyote howls)
who's out there?”
You know, “I'm over here.”
So, it's a non-confrontational call,
depending on the time of the year.
We get those calls all the time where there's 30 coyotes here.
(coyotes howling)
-It's called the Beau Geste effect,
something to do with harmonics in their vocalizations.
And it makes it sound like there are more animals than there actually are.
(coyotes yap and howl)
So there have been studies that have shown that humans
overestimate the number of animals by about a third.
(coyote howling)
-Sometimes when they see dogs or people kind of near something
they care about, like their dens, they’ll emit like a warning bark
(coyote barking)
and there's nothing to be scared of there.
They're just communicating
that you're kind of in their space and they might not want you there.
-It's not uncommon for coyotes to follow people along green spaces or down trails.
-In Seattle, the peak kind of denning time is between May and June.
And so that's often when we see that escorting behavior and all they're doing
is pretty much making sure
that you're away from their babies because that's what they care about.
That's what they're protecting.
-There's a tremendous amount of fear
that doesn't necessarily need to be there.
I've been doing this for 23 years, and out of thousands of calls
that we take, I'm guessing less than ten times, has
there been actual contact between a coyote and a human.
So it's very rare.
-We don't even have a coyote bite a year.
It's more likely the animal's going to follow you is going to be inquisitive.
And that's when we need
to have both adults and children educated to have a reaction that's appropriate.
-We call it humane hazing.
It's really trying to just encourage coyotes to not become too
used to being really close to people.
- I'm going to throw this
stick, you know, or if I've got a coat on because there's rain.
We're raining right now.
Make yourself look novel and big and yell, “Go away, coyote.”
- Any activity at all.
Any behavior you can do that makes them feel unwelcome,
the more you can exclude, the better.
If the whole community is doing that, the animal never has the opportunity
to think I've got it made in your backyard.
The encounters we don't want to see is when the coyote
doesn't budge, doesn't seem like it's scared at all.
- It may not seem like that big of a deal then, right then and there,
but that's not natural for a wild raccoon,
coyote, whatever, to be walking around amongst students on a college campus.
-People sometimes think that feeding coyote is helping that coyote,
but there's kind of a saying in wildlife biology that I fed coyote is a dead coyote.
And that's because I will habituate coyotes to think that people equal food.
-That's just only going to lead one way. Loss of fear and then
the ultimate removal of the animal.
- Lethal removals, You just change that territory dynamic.
So that's an open house.
- We know that another coyote is going to fill that void.
The goal now is to educate the community
to keep that new coyote wild.
It is virtually impossible to reinstill fear into adult coyotes.
Now, with young coyotes, you can really ingrain fear into those coyotes.
And, and that's really what we should be doing.
-In most cases,
it's a peaceful coexistence.
Coyotes live quite well without having any interactions with people.
Mostly what it comes down to is making sure our food is secured.
Any outdoor food, not leaving pet food on the porch.
-Clean up your garbage, your compost, your garden.
Again, exclude as well hotwire fencing.
- You also have a pear tree and a plum tree,
I know it's daunting, but you might want to try to keep
that stuff picked up because that's why they're coming there.
-And there's nothing that coyote will or can do to avoid that.
It's on us to make them avoid it by making those spaces unfavorable to them.
We live in Coyote country and they're not going away.
So the thing of it is, is learning how to live with them.
(coyote howls)
♪♪
-Watch CityStream Tuesday nights at 7,
on the Seattle Channel, or find us anytime online
at SeattleChannel.org.
♪♪