Tag: coyote

Urban Coyotes Make Themselves at Home

  • Bill Dodge is a PhD student at Wayne State University. He's leading a team of researchers looking into the behavior of urban coyotes in Oakland County. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

Coyotes have been moving into the city. There have been sightings in a lot of American cities, including Chicago and Detroit.

You could potentially see coyotes almost anywhere in Michigan, but not a whole lot is known about the state’s urban coyotes.

There’s a small research team from Wayne State University that’s trying to figure the animals out. They want to find out how many coyotes are living in cities. And they want to know what they’re eating, and how they survive.

More about urban coyotes in Chicago

More about urban coyotes in Los Angeles County

A video of a Canadian and a coyote

Ghosts in the Cities

Transcript

(sound of traffic whizzing by)

A few weeks ago, one day just after dawn, I met up with the team at the side of a road in Oakland County. We crossed the road to get to a grassy, undeveloped piece of land. The group fanned out to look for evidence of coyotes… that is: tracks, and scat. After just a few steps, we found tracks.

Bill Dodge is a PhD student at Wayne State, and he’s the team leader.

“Coyote tracks are a lot neater than dog tracks, with coyotes usually the trail pattern is pretty straight as if they know where they’re going.”

A minute later… more evidence.

“We’ve got a scat up here.”

The lucky guy who gets to collect that scat is Nick Marengo. He’s an undergrad at Wayne State.

“I’m going to fill out a data form… bag it… and collect it. RW: So is this the job that falls to students mostly? (Nick laughs) Bill: No I’ll pick up scat… RW: it’s not beneath you? (laughs) Bill: It’s not beneath me to pick up coyote scat.”

I’ll spare you the finer details… but basically, they’re finding out what the coyotes are eating. Bill Dodge says people often think urban coyotes are eating garbage and people’s pets… but that’s actually not very common.

“Voles, mice, eastern cottontail rabbits, those are the top three food items.”

He says anywhere there’s green space with a little bit of cover… there are coyotes. Even highway interchanges and Detroit Metro Airport.

They’re also trying to trap coyotes so they can put radio collars on and track them.

So far… they haven’t caught any. You know that thing you’ve heard about coyotes being wily? Bill Dodge says that’s true.

“They’re resilient. We’ve been trying to eliminate them for about 100 years and they’re still around and they’ve actually done well and prospered in urban areas.”

Both coyotes and wolves were bountied and killed for decades in Michigan. Bill Dodge says coyotes really rebounded in the 1980s. And he says it appears that coyotes have been moving into Michigan cities over the last decade or so.

“Territories outside urban areas are full so they’re moving into urban areas where there’s marginal habitat but it’s habitat in itself.”

And he says that’s making some people worried that coyotes might eat their pets. He says problem coyotes might have to be killed. But he says relocating coyotes won’t work.

“It’s kind of futile. We could remove the coyotes in this area and the void would just be filled by other coyotes.”

He says coyotes are just here now… and people will need to learn to co-exist with them.

He says there haven’t been any reported attacks on people in Michigan. But there have been a few reports of pets being attacked.

Research suggests that conflicts are more likely to happen when coyotes lose their natural fear of people. And that happens when people feed coyotes – either on purpose or accidentally.

Holly Hadac is volunteering for the coyote research project.

“With coyotes, it’s all about the food. That’s why we say a fed coyote is a dead coyote.”

She says it’s a good idea to bring pet food indoors, and secure compost piles with a cover. And never feed a coyote directly. She says even though coyote attacks on pets are rare, you should still keep an eye on your pets.

That’s the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.

Conflicts Between People and Wildlife

  • People sometimes move to the outer suburbs to be a little closer to nature. But when nature turns out to be a squirrel storing nuts in your attic or a raccoon looking for a free meal in your garbage can, there's conflict. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Throughout the Midwest, it’s becoming more and more common
to see wild animals living in the city and the suburbs. The number of coyotes, deer and Canada geese is growing. And suburbs keep sprawling… but the animals there stay put, and adapt to the new surroundings. That can cause conflicts between the animals… and people. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ann-Elise Henzl reports:

Transcript

Throughout the Midwest, it’s becoming more and more common
to see wild animals living in the city and the suburbs. The number of
coyotes, deer and Canada geese is growing. And suburbs keep sprawling…
but the animals there stay put, and adapt to the new surroundings. That
can cause conflicts between the animals… and people. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Ann-Elise Henzl reports:


It can get busy at wildlife rehabilitation centers. At this center, five thousand animals are treated and released each year. There’s a big variety, ranging from raccoons to sandhill cranes.


(Sound of birds chirping)


In spring and early summer, it’s very crowded in the nursery.


“We’ve got a young grackle in here, and he’s really on about the one-hour feeding stage learning the transition between us feeding him and feeding himself…”


Scott Diehl is the manager of the wildlife rehabilitation center at the Wisconsin humane society in Milwaukee. Dozens of young animals are being nursed back to health here in incubators and cages.


“Here’s little teenage gray squirrels in here playing around and goofing off and their play activity actually teaches them how to – it helps build their muscles, and teaches them how to climb…”


Many of the babies are here because their parents were run over by cars. That’s what happened to a female mallard who’s being examined by a wildlife rehabilitator, in the “triage” room.


“He’s just outstretching the wings, he’s feeling over the bones to see if he feels fractures and I can see from here that the left wing that he is examining looks like it has fractured metacarpals, so that’s the outer wing, kind of analogous to our fingers, we’ve got actually a little blood showing there. And so Mike is just going to flush that wound out with a little saline now he’s going to examine things, and quite frankly it doesn’t look like she’s using her legs well either.”


It turns out the duck has numerous broken bones and other serious health problems, so she’s euthanized. Mallards are often hit by cars in cities. That’s because they nest in grassy areas, then walk their babies to the water. That can mean crossing a number of streets.


Ricky Lein is the urban wildlife specialist for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
He says people and animals are always getting into some kind of conflict in urban areas.


“Recently I had a person come in who owned twenty acres in a suburban area and talked about how they enjoyed the coyotes as long as they stayed on their territory but the coyote had made the decision to come into their backyard and eat a family cat, and I tried in a very polite way to point out that was the coyote’s territory.”


Lein says urban sprawl also causes problems by creating places that attract some wild animals
like white-tailed deer. They like areas where the woods meet wide-open lawns. That describes many suburban neighborhoods.


As a result, there are now more deer across the Midwest then ever before,
and the population of Canada geese is exploding in the same area. Lein says the geese have found their version of “heaven.”


“A lot of urban parks, condo complexes, whatnot, where you have a pond or storm water run-off pond and they keep five to ten acres of grass mowed around it, and they’ve eliminated hunting… that is heaven to a Canada goose.”


But some communities are considering killing urban geese in order to reduce the population.
Other cities have hired sharpshooters to kill urban deer. So the Humane Society of the United States has created a program called “Wild Neighbors.” Maggie Brasted is the organization’s director for urban wildlife conflicts.


“One of our goals is to help people find solutions so that they can coexist with these wild neighbors, with the wildlife around them, ’cause you know sometimes there are real problems. There are real concerns. It’s not that every time someone is upset about wild animals around them that they should just be told, “Oh just live with it,” there are real issues so we want to be able to offer them real practical solutions other than killing the animals.”


Brasted says there’s a complex relationship between humans and wild animals in urban areas.


“It’s not real simple to just say that you know they were here first or they shouldn’t be here. Or why are they around people? They’re adapting to what we do, they’re adapting to the changes we make. They’re taking advantage of whatever habitat niche that they find.”


Brasted says the wild animals that live in the city and suburbs are there to stay. So people will either have to find ways to live with them or to control their population.


For the GLRC, I’m Ann-Elise Henzl.

Related Links

Timber Wolves Moving Into New Area

  • Timber wolves have been making a comeback in the Midwest for some time. Recently, they've been reappearing in places they haven't been seen in decades.

Timber wolves are moving into an area where they
haven’t been seen for about 80 years. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Timber wolves are moving into an area where they haven’t been seen for about 80 years. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


Timber wolves have been repopulating areas of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the upper peninsula of Michigan for some time now. But recently, a wolf was shot and killed in the lower peninsula of Michigan. Since then, tracks of two more wolves have been identified not too far away from the shooting. The two peninsulas of Michigan are separated by water five miles across the connect Lake Michigan to Lake Huron. Sometimes, it freezes over. Michigan Department of Natural Resources biologists figure a small pack of wolves made the trek across the ice. Brian Roell is with the DNR.


“Well, it’s interesting that, you know, wolves are, you know, repopulating areas that, you know, they’ve been removed from. It’s really nice to see that these wolves are making their own comeback.”


Hunters are warned to be careful when trapping or hunting. The wolves are still federally protected. The wolf shooting this fall was ruled accidental because the trapper shot the animal thinking it was a coyote, since wolves were killed off in the area decades ago.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Cougars Still Stalking the Region?

For many years, state and federal wildlife officials have considered the cougar extinct in the Great Lakes region. However, many people claim to have seen the large predatory cat long after it supposedly disappeared. Conservationists debate whether these sightings are real and if they are, they wonder whether the cougars are wild or merely escaped pets. Investigations are underway in many states, including Minnesota, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and in Canada. Now, a wildlife biologist in Michigan says he has proof that a breeding population of wild cougars is living in the Upper Peninsula. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Gretchen Millich reports:

Wolf Takes Long Trip South

  • Canis lupus: Gray Wolf – Photo courtesy of Michigan Department of Natural Resources © 2001.

The gray wolf is making a comeback in the upper Midwest, and for some young wolves the area may be getting a little too crowded. It’s not unusual for young wolves to travel long distances to stake out a territory of their own, but as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports… one wolf’s trip has surprised everyone:

Transcript

The gray wolf is making a comeback in the upper Midwest. And for some young wolves the area may be getting a little too crowded. It’s not unusual for young wolves to travel long distances to stake out a territory of their own, but as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports… one wolf’s trip has surprised everyone:


The wolf was first seen two and half years ago as a young pup in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. At that time he was caught in a trap, and wildlife officials tagged him as “Wolf No. 18.” They fitted him with a radio collar and followed his movements for nine months before they lost track of him.


About a year and a half… and over 450 miles later, the wolf’s luck came to an end. A bow hunter from central Missouri saw the wolf snooping around his sheep pen. The hunter shot and killed the wolf – apparently mistaking it for a coyote. He realized his mistake when he noticed the radio collar.


Typically, young wolves travel west or northwest from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, so when Michigan Wildlife Division Supervisor Jim Hammill heard the news that one of their wolves had turned up in Missouri… he could only think of one explanation:


“My first reaction was that somebody possibly killed the wolf in Michigan and transported it to Missouri and they found the carcass of the animal down there… but that was not what happened… and you know this animal was seen alive in Missouri before it was killed, so you know, it’s obvious that this was a natural movement and, uh, really sort of a stunning thing to have happened.”


Stunning because Hammill has never heard of a wolf traveling this far south before. They’ve seen wolves travel as far west… and northwest, but typically those wolves have an easier trip. Wolf Number 18 would have had to overcome huge obstacles, such as a number of major highways, a number of rivers including the Mississippi, and large open spaces like farms.


Hammill says this wolf’s trip will likely shed some light on the gray wolf’s behavior. And that may be especially helpful to biologists in the northeast – a region that hasn’t heard the howl of a wolf for some time:


“A lot of folks up there feel that there’s no way that wolves could re-populate the area without a trap and translocation program. But, you know, I wonder about that because of the kinds of movements that we’ve been seeing here in the Midwest.”


Wolf 18’s body has been shipped back to a Michigan Department of Natural Resources lab. There – they’ll try to piece together just what this wolf encountered on his historic trip south. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.