Volunteers with Edmonton’s Urban Coyote Project have just started a new season of field detection and numbers are already significantly higher compared to last year.
Colleen Cassady St. Clair, a biological sciences professor at the University of Alberta, has been leading the project for the past 12 years.
“When the volunteers see a coyote during the day in a residential area that allows them to get as close as 40 meters, we consider it a coyote that is too bold around people,” she explained.
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Self-described nature lover Cheryl Locicero started volunteering at the project after seeing several coyotes in her community.
“Then I started seeing coyotes from our bird feeder. “They both ate the seeds and they dig and dig and dig and get the mice,” she said.
One day she opened her front door and found that a brave coyote was following behind her pet.
“It was at the foot of our tree and our cat was far up in the tree, obviously frightened.”
That incident crossed the border and she found out about the project and decided to volunteer.
She is not alone. Locicero is one of 63 volunteers in 43 neighborhoods participating in Year 2 of an intervention program.
The program has volunteers reporting coyote sightings and, if the animals get too close, they haze.
“They chase the coyote after them while shouting at it or shaking a can full of coins and throwing a tennis ball that was weighed with sand and tied with tape in its direction. So it is an object that will not hurt a coyote in any physical way, ”said St. Clair explains.
“The purpose of all this is to make coyotes more wary of people, more afraid of people in residential areas.”
Last year, for three months between February and May, 70 volunteers in 25 neighborhoods reported seeing 64 coyotes.
This year, volunteers reported seeing 20 in just the first week.
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“We are now right in the thick of breeding season when coyotes tend to be around and push up kind of hormones, a little fatter than they might normally be,” St. Clair explains.
She also said the coyotes currently have few natural food sources, which drives them to look for alternatives, things that residents may not even realize are lures.
“This includes rubbish, but also spilled bird seed and pet food if it is out, fallen fruit, compost,” she said.
But in those 84 observations, volunteers only needed five times to haze the coyotes.
“My experience is that most of them will react and be scared or run, or at least get out of the area when you stand your man,” Locicero said.
“What we do not want to do is chase coyotes in natural areas. When they act in completely natural ways at great distances from people, ”said St. Clair said.
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This phase of the project will last for the next three months and more volunteers are welcome to join.
Locicero said she has so far enjoyed participating in the program.
“You just walk around and you see places that might be pulling coyotes into the neighborhood,” she explained.
Locicero said she can now distinguish coyote routes, even if she does not see the animal herself.
St. Clair said once the data was collected, it would be compiled into a public report.
“We hope to be able to say with data how coyotes respond to this treatment. Do they act more cautiously towards people? Take down the reports of brave coyotes? ”
More information is available at the Urban Coyote Project website.
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