Olivia Ouellette: How safely can coyotes co-exist with humans?

A coyote pouncing on prey in the winter

-Photo by Yifei He

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

University of Rhode Island graduate student Kimberly Rivera has been conducting a survey since the beginning of October on the coyote population in Rhode Island.

Rivera, who graduated in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in environmental science from the University of Delaware, hopes to promote better co-existence between coyotes and Rhode Islanders.

Since the beginning of her work, Rivera has received about 425 completed responses. With a minimum goal of 500 completed surveys, Rivera plans to keep the survey open until at least December.

The survey takes about 5-10 minutes to complete and asks respondents about demographics — age, location, are you a full-time Rhode Island resident — and goes on to ask about any experiences with coyotes.

“Ultimately, what I really want to do is understand how people’s knowledge, belief and feelings tie back to these independent variables that were measured,” Rivera said.

Along with the survey, Rivera is also conducting more hands-on research using camera-trap technology. Initially intended for a bobcat study, these cameras are placed around Rhode Island, and when something walks by, it triggers the motion-sensor camera to take a series of photographs. These cameras then store the photographs, as well as save the date and time, letting Rivera look back and see when and where coyotes are most active.

Through her work, Rivera is trying to promote the acceptance and a better understanding of coyotes.

“I think co-existence is key moving into the future,” she said. “I want people to think about how they co-exist with coyotes and what that means to them.”

Rivera’s original plan was to travel to Madagascar to study seven native carnivore species there and see how the locals interact with those species. She was interested in seeing how people’s attitudes and knowledge about those species affected their interactions with them. The coronavirus pandemic required her to change her research plans.

Although her initial plans fell through, Rivera was still enthusiastic about reconstructing her project into a human-wildlife conflict study on coyotes, similar to what she would have researched in Madagascar.

“I’ve always had an interest in coyotes because on the East Coast they’re one of the only apex predators,” she said.

At the end of the survey there are a series of questions about how negatively people view coyotes in regards to certain issues, such as pets, livestock and property damage.

“I think it really depends on who you ask,” Rivera said. “I think there is potential for coyotes to be dangerous.”

One of the top concerns people have in Rhode Island in connection with coyotes is the safety of their pets.

“If you have small dogs that you are leaving out in the yard without fences or you have outdoor cats that are wandering around, there's always going to be a risk,” Rivera said. “And that could be coyotes or it could be a car hitting them, so it's just one of many risks.”

Olivia Ouellette is a University of Rhode Island journalism student.

Chris Powell: How much can Connecticut bear?

A black bear, of the only bear species found in New England

Connecticut's bear population, estimated at 800, is growing "exponentially," a newspaper reported the other day. This was a bit hyperbolic, since after 800 the next level in an exponential series is 800 times 800 -- 640,000 -- and the bear population will not be increasing that quickly.

But 640,000 bears in Connecticut will be the inevitable outcome unless the state's largely indifferent policy toward them is radically changed. That policy is simply to advise the public not to feed the animals -- to secure trash cans, outdoor grills and bird feeders and to hope the bears stop breaking into houses and attacking domestic animals. If that policy was accomplishing anything, there wouldn't be 800 bears in the state already and their population wouldn't be growing, "exponentially”"or just fast. So in another 10 years or so this policy is bound to leave most towns with many bears bumping into each other as they are shooed away from one neighborhood to the next.

State government's animal-control people are tiring of anesthetizing tagging and relocating troublesome bears, increasingly inclined to tell frantic callers just to let the animals move along and frighten someone else. But as the bear population grows, the animal-control people may be compelled to do a lot more relocations, even as the remote forests to which the bears are taken fill up with them and make them even more eager to return to less competitive neighborhoods.

The alternative to having bears everywhere is for state government to authorize a bear-hunting season, maybe even paying bounties to hunters. But just musing about hunting bears makes certain wildlife lovers hysterical.

Bears are cute -- at a safe distance anyway. A few may contribute some excitement to Connecticut's ordinarily placid suburban atmosphere. But a dozen or more in every town will not be cute. They will cause perpetual panic and frequent damage and injury.

Connecticut already is full of deer, which are cute too and often a delight to see with their fawns. Bucks, while rarely seen, can be majestic.

But deer are not a delight when they dart in front of cars and get hit, damaging vehicles and injuring their occupants, or when they munch on plantings, gardens, orchards, and farm fields.

So Connecticut has some deer-hunting seasons, and there is little clamor to repeal them. Don't try telling farmers how cute deer are. Having worked so hard to get the earth to produce, farmers can obtain state permits to shoot deer on their property year-round to protect the fruit of their labor.

Enacting a bear-hunting season would eliminate the need for much more hunting in the future and thus be far kinder to the animals in the long run. But does Connecticut have any elected officials with the courage to admit that you can't always be friends equally with people and animals?

It's not just bears. How many coyotes, bobcats, weasels and such does Connecticut really want to endure? Nature is not always warm and cuddly. It often has sharp claws and teeth.

But since Connecticut is not very good at facing up to policy failures and the special interests behind them, dozens of bears in every town may be necessary before the General Assembly and the governor enact something more in the public interest than laissez-bear.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

Grace Kelly: Waste management important in suppressing coyote population

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

On a recent Friday afternoon, online viewers watched as Numi Mitchell, lead scientist for the Narragansett Bay Coyote Study (NBCS), held what looked like a large antenna in one hand and a beeping device in her other. An osprey cries overhead, and if it weren’t for the Providence Police Department’s Clydesdale horses in the paddock, you wouldn’t know that Mitchell was in Roger Williams Park.

“She’s here!” Mitchell said, as a particularly loud beep sounded.

She being a female coyote named Whinny, who is making her way through the park along with her three pups. Some other hot spots on Whinny’s travels include a trash-collection area in the park and the wind turbines near Save The Bay on Providence’s working waterfront.

The NBCS, which started in 2004, tracks local coyotes, like Whinny, in an effort to observe their movements and populations and to pinpoint unnatural food sources such as trash-disposal areas and farm-animal byproducts.

Coyotes are omnivores, eating a variety of food from berries to bunnies. But they are also opportunistic, and a dumpster can provide an easy meal with little effort.

In her 16 years studying Rhode Island’s coyote populations, Mitchell has found that the increase in the animal’s numbers can largely be attributed to people’s carelessness with food and their compulsion to feed wild animals.

Before coyotes arrived in Rhode Island and other areas along the East Coast, they were dwellers of the broad expanse of prairie in the country’s interior.

“They were originally from the Great Plains,” said Mary Gannon, wildlife outreach coordinator for the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management’s Division Fish and Wildlife. “But when European settlers came [to New England], they cut down forests and killed a lot of the natural predators in our area.”

Some native predators that predated coyotes in Rhode Island and New England included the gray wolf, mountain lions, and bears. With these large predators gone, there was room for coyotes. They moved in.

“The coyotes expanded their territory to the north and south of the U.S.,” Gannon said.

She said they first arrived in Rhode Island in the 1960s and reached the Narragansett Bay islands in the mid-’90s. Soon after their arrival, the state’s coyote populations began to quickly increase, thanks to ample access to human-produced trash.

“Our tracking efforts started on the islands, particularly Aquidneck Island, which was seeing an explosion of coyotes,” Mitchell said. “We were trying to figure out why they were so abundant. And it’s the garbage that is subsidizing the coyote’s diet. It’s not the coyotes that are the problem; it’s people leaving trash outside.”

While hunting of coyotes is allowed, NBCS has maintained that it’s trash management that is the key to reducing coyote populations.

In 2018, NBCS received a $1.1 million federal grant to fund a five-year study of coyotes in Rhode Island, part of which includes food-removal experiments across the state. Mitchell noted that one of these efforts will be with a farmer in the Coventry village of Greene, whose animal waste and byproduct has attracted and fed coyotes in the area.

Back at the Providence police paddock, Mitchell and her crew try to coax Whinny out from her hiding place to offer a fleeting glance to online viewers. They hop the fence, and with a shaking camera and curious Clydesdales running over to get a piece of the action, it feels like a James Bond film.

Suddenly, they gasp at the sound of paws crunching delicately in the underbrush.

“She just ran by us,” whispered Gabrielle De Meillon, a technical staff assistant for DEM. Whinny is a pixelated streak of gray as she continues on her way to seek out trash and continue her journey through Providence.

Grace Kelly is an ecoRI News journalist.

Frank Carini: Facing the population explosion of coyotes in New England

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

MIDDLETOWN, R.I.

During her decade of tracking coyotes on Aquidneck and Conanicut islands, in Narragansett Bay, Numi Mitchell has discovered humans have a lot to learn. The pervasiveness of Canis latrans — Latin for “barking dog” — in Portsmouth, Middletown, Newport and Jamestown, R.I., can largely be attributed to people’s carelessness with food and their compulsion to feed wild animals.

Since 2004, when Mitchell began studying local coyote behavior, she has found an Aquidneck Island Council member who was feeding coyotes, believing that would keep them from eating neighborhood cats; a gentleman who fed coyotes submarine sandwiches; an elderly woman who was feeding some 100 feral cats, not knowing much of the “kibble” she was leaving out was actually being devoured by coyotes — most of the cats were then eaten by the coyotes when the woman moved on; and Newport residents who left chicken carcasses out, across the street from a playground, to attract coyotes.

Coyotes eat whatever is easy, Mitchell told an audience of 20 or so people during an Aug. 20 presentation at Newport Vineyards. Without the direct or indirect help of humans, the wildlife biologist said coyotes dine on woodchucks and field mice. She noted that 20 percent of the coyote diet, especially for pups, is fruit such as blueberries.

But once coyotes get a taste of human food, that’s when the problems start. “Coyotes eat deer, but they’ll also whack neighborhood pets,” Mitchell said. That happens when they begin to associate the presence of humans with food. “They won’t eat pets if there’s no subsidized food from people,” Mitchell said, “because they wouldn't be that bold.”

The Narragansett Bay Coyote Study was born out of one pet’s mauling by a coyote. After Aquidneck Island resident Diana Prince’s dog was killed, she contacted Mitchell about how to exterminate the island’s population of coyotes. However, once Prince's anger subsided and Mitchell had explained coyote behavior, the Prince Charitable Trusts decided to fund a one-year study. Mitchell’s study is now entering its 11th year.

Coyote smart

Coyotes were first documented in Rhode Island, in Warren in the 1960s, and are now found in all parts of the state except Block Island. They first reached Aquidneck and Conanicut islands in the mid-1990s, according to Mitchell.

The Narragansett Bay Coyote Study tracks, with expensive collars and equipment, the local coyote population to develop science-based co-existence and management strategies. Mitchell noted that the study — and her work — aren’t pro or anti-coyote. She said the program is “straight science.”

CoyoteSmarts, in partnership with the study, is a public-information initiative of the Potter League for Animals, The Conservation Agency, Rhode Island Natural History Survey, Aquidneck Land Trust and the Norman Bird Sanctuary to address the growing presence of coyotes in Jamestown and on Aquidneck Island and to educate humans to coexist with these wild animals.

The mission of the group is to work with municipalities, local police and school departments, and state agencies to raise public awareness about coyotes, encourage best management practices and promote effective strategies for keeping pets, families and communities safe.

Coyotes are a native species, according to Mitchell. She said they are hard to catch, and clever, creative and opportunistic. Their numbers and range across North America are growing, she said, because the wolf population has been “blasted away.”

Their numbers also grow when large amounts of food are provided to coyotes intentionally or unintentionally by people. These “easy pickin’s” create coyote problems — and problem coyotes.

Mitchell said the most effective way to reduce human-coyote conflict is to reduce the animal’s food supply. The more food available, she said, the more pups they have and the smaller the territory they have to defend, which results in more coyotes per square mile and more risk of contact with humans.

Coyotes live in a family group, usually in packs of seven to 10 members, and typically take ownership of 7 or so square miles, according to Mitchell. She has counted an Aquidneck Island pack with 21 members.

Seven to eight packs roam Aquidneck Island and there are another three to four in Jamestown, according to Mitchell. As for the total number of coyotes on the two islands, she said she doesn't really know.

“We don’t call them wily for nothing,” Mitchell said.

However, unlike deer, which will keep breeding until they starve, coyotes manage their population. Female coyotes will have fewer pups if the pack is stressed by a lack of food.

On Aquidneck and Conanicut islands, improperly discarded livestock carcasses and roadkill, especially deer, dragged into the woods are easy pickin’s for coyotes. Their numbers grow.

Mitchell said she found a dumping ground of dead animals, including sheep and deer, on Peckham Brothers Quarry property in Middletown. It was feeding a large coyote pack that lived in a small territory.

She showed a nighttime video of a coyote pack feeding on cow carcasses not properly buried on a Jamestown farm. She said that a coyote pack can feed on a deer carcass for three to five days.

“An area that would be able to handle one pack can now hold three,” she said. “With easy food resources, coyotes don’t increase their territory.”

Feeding pets outside, unsecured trash cans, poorly managed compost bins/piles, fish guts left on piers, docks and rocks, and restaurant food scrap left out in the open, as a Middletown pig farmer has done, help create “super small coyote territory,” Mitchell said. She said these practices, which can include doughnuts left behind at a construction site, also make coyotes see people as food providers.

“As soon as coyotes get a taste for these subsidized food sources, they go for it,” Mitchell said. “The pack could have gone ten years without coming in contact with people, but now they are no longer afraid of people.”

Coyotes are always on high alert when it comes to sniffing out subsidized food sources, like unsecured trash cans and poorly secured livestock feed.

No lethal solution

Removal of coyotes by lethal means — though it may be necessary for some problem animals — doesn't control their population, according to Mitchell.

“Shooting them isn’t effective, because they are impossible to get rid of,” she said. “You can’t get rid of them with lethal control. Passive management is the most effective method.”

Lethal methods such as hunting, trapping or poisoning, especially in neighborhoods, are generally more dangerous to pets and the community than to the coyotes, Mitchell said.

She also noted that eliminating an entire group of coyotes, rather than solving the problem, simply creates a vacuum that other coyotes will quickly fill. Also, if a resident pack is removed, she said, it will likely be replaced by transient coyotes, which are often even less desirable.

In Rhode Island, you can hunt coyotes year-round, but relocating them is illegal.

Mitchell said recreational hunting of coyotes is fine and keeps them fearful of humans. However, a kill campaign, she said, accomplishes nothing. She said eliminating subsidized food sources can drop pack numbers by two-thirds.

Ecosystem and community impact

Coyotes play an important ecosystem role. As the top predator in Jamestown and on Aquidneck Island, the presence or absence of coyotes has a major impact on the surrounding biological community, according to Mitchell.

They help control pests such deer, rodents and geese, and with some 40 feral-cat colonies in the four island municipalities, coyotes help keep those numbers under control.

And while coyotes can benefit bird populations by preying on many of the small mammals that eat birds, their young and/or their eggs, it's possiblethat coyotes also kill piping plovers, which are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

Mitchell is studying coyote impact on the islands’ natural environments.

Coyote attacks on humans are rare and seldom result in serious injuries, according to Mitchell. Only two deaths have ever been documented — a toddler in California, in 1981, and a 19-year-old woman hiking alone in Nova Scotia, in 2009. Children are more at risk than adults, and attacks are more common in urban areas where coyotes have lost their fear of humans thanks to intentional or unintentional feeding.

Coyotes are sometimes mistaken for dogs and may at times act like dogs. They’ve even been known to beg for food. Despite this disarming behavior, however, they are a wild and dangerous animal, especially when they’ve lost their fear of humans, according to Mitchell.

Coyotes run with their tails down and dogs run with their tails up. Coyotes are more adaptable than wolves and have learned to thrive near humans, especially the ones who feed them.

Frank Carini is editor of ecoRI News.