Read the fine print on this coyote warning sign

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That is awesome!

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They’re an invasive species. In the absence of larger predators (wolves, for the most part), coyotes have spread into many areas. But coyotes don’t eat the same things that wolves ate. What they do eat are pets and livestock. Our neighbors’ chickens, for instance, or my parents’ cats.

There’s a wikipedia article that does a pretty good job documenting coyote attacks on people, but the reality is that even though these attacks are increasing in frequency, they’re still very uncommon. The real damage is further disruption to ecosystems we’ve already put under stress.

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Nah, just haze them. Hazing Coyotees is the opposite of hazing fraternity members, you reduce odds of death/injury and increase liklihood they stay away when you haze a coyotee.

http://uwurbancanidproject.weebly.com/living-with-foxes-and-coyotes.html

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I live on an island in New England with a few active coyotes, and have seen them trotting down in-town roads and cutting through backyards. I’ve known neighbors to have lost pets to them. Most interesting active measure I’ve seen is an alpaca who mingles with a herd of Black Angus cows at a local farm. He’s said to have chased off at least one coyote, and seems to have some kind of innate herding instinct.

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That’s sort of the conventional narrative, but I’ve read solid research that indicates coyotes are mostly just returning to a distribution they had previous to European settlement. They’re certainly not “invasive.” People just aren’t used to having them around. (And half the problem in California is newly built suburbs that encroached on coyote habitat, forcing people into contact with them.)

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Hazing works well but only if they haven’t gotten too used to humans. From the conclusion to the study I linked to above (comment 18):

“Once coyotes have begun acting boldly or aggressively around humans, it is unlikely that any attempts at hazing can be applied with sufficient consistency or intensity to reverse the coyote habituation. In these circumstances, removal of the offending animals is probably the only effective strategy”

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A book I read recently written by guy interviewed here outlined how federal agencies tried to wipe out the coyote like they did the wolf, to aid ranchers, and it didn’t work because coyotes respond to population decline by pretty much “ramping up production”:

Also about the livestock/ranching issue, and why coyote eradication situation is complicated:

Coyotes killed a young woman in Canada a few years back, of course, so whatever you think about coyotes being dangerous, there is that fatality for wildlife control agencies to think on when responding to complaints:

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Here in Northern Greater Toronto, we have coyotes. I can hear them some nights and I see the occasional one at night. However, some people put out their garbage the day before, and that night is a wildlife buffet once the raccoons get the kitchen bins open. Coyotes getting used to entering people areas and feeding on the scraps will only lead to trouble. All of these people have garages where it can be prepped and put out on the morning of the pickup. sigh

(And I could do without the crows leaving steak bones in the birdbath after they dunk their leftovers.)

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I think a lot of the more aggressive, larger fearless coyotes that are being seen lately are in fact coydogs or at least have some percentage of admixture with domestic dogs.

Wild Coyotes don’t bother me at all, even in urban areas. Although some feral cat hoarders do tend to illogically get upset when the animals they are hoarding in “colonies” on other people’s property fall prey to “nature, red in tooth and claw”.

There was an incident near me where a cat hoarder was finding her outdoor feral cats killed and their internal organs nearly surgically removed and the internal cavity squeaky clean. Her assumption was cat-hating psychopaths or Satanists killing her cats. Reality (in the form of a game cam) showed that it was coyotes, Using the cat like a quick snack taco bowl, licking it clean and then leaving the crunchy bits behind.

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Housecats that roam free are an invasive species. As for chickens, their enemies are numerous and manifold. Raccoons, weasels, dogs, cats, foxes, skunks, possums, snakes, hawks, bears, owls and bobcats. I’m sure I’ve forgotten some other North American predator. If your chickens are being killed, that’s on you to fix, because chickens are designed to be eaten.

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The things I’ve read indicate that coyotes were not originally found in North Carolina, as an example. Now they’re present all the way from the mountains to the beach. They also seem to be missing from Native American mythology in North Carolina.

The counterpoint to that is that our native North Carolina Red Wolves seem to have a substantial amount of Coyote DNA. The maps I’ve seen showing historic coyote distribution seem to show the coyotes avoiding forest habitats until the 19th century, but Wikipedia talks about coyote fossils coming from Pennsylvania and West Virginia. I’d be interested to check out the research you’ve read.

In any case, coyote expansion into populated areas is effectively a force of nature. They’re like humans in their galling ability to adapt to inappropriate environments.

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Coyotes are all over the place in urban and suburban settings; the example I made was in a suburban school yard with woods nearby. My collie/shepherd cross and I used to chase coyotes down the street in the middle of Vancouver.
A doctor I knew was walking her standard (big) poodle and miniature poodle (leashed) around the soccer and baseball fields at the community center (about 22nd Av. and Heather St. in Vancouver) - 8:00AM on a summer day. A coyote came down between the houses across the street, grabbed the miniature poodle, pulled it out of the collar and made off with it. The woman was completely traumatized.
Coyotes are the only mammal whose numbers have increased in North America since Europeans have settled it. They are extremely adaptable and comfortable in urban settings.

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I read in the past that Coyotes suppress fox populations, so I was just checking up on that to rebut your argument. They do tend to depress North Carolina’s population of red foxes. But. . .those are an invasive species, too. Our native gray foxes seem indifferent to foxes. Food for thought.

Domestic cats in general may be fair game for coyotes in your book, but my precious little fuzzy angel is surrounded by a mobile 50 yard Coyote Exclusion Zone.

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It must be the work of a psycho cult … or owls.

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North American Canids all shared a common ancestry within 100,000 years ago according to DNA. The Coyote’s range being limited to the desert Southwest is probably fairly recent, but before the arrival of Europeans or even Native Americans. There’s even a theory that proto-coyotes were displaced from the Southeastern US by their hybrid offspring the red wolf, which displaced them from their niche beneath the grey wolf.

All that being said, it’s an exercise in futility to try and determine where the coyote’s native range is or was. They interbreed with other canids and natural selection has apparently grown and shrunk them depending on what was available to prey upon. Nature is not a fixed unchanging thing.

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Redwood City has used humor in their signs before. A while back they had a sign a few blocks from my home that read simply “Obey This Sign”.

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Thank you. Even more recent development has had a huge impact. Prior to 1980s, coyote sightings were relatively infrequent in the more urban areas. But we’ve built sprawling suburbs and we’ve encroached in their habitat. I’m not just talking about the newer cities and developments in Orange County, Riverside, or San Bernardino either. Many parts of the South Bay, Cerritos and Cypress were not as fully developed as they are now. Coyotes gotta go somewhere.

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I hope they make more. Maybe it’s just one sign person, living better by amusing themselves at otherwise mundane job. If so, live long and prosper!

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