Coyotes adapting, thriving even in downtown areas
In one instance a coyote sat quietly and rested in shade for an hour while a stream of humans walked past on a paved path. The distance between the four-legged and the two-leggeds was just 20 feet. The coyote was as unthreatening as the best-behaved golden retriever.
In another a coyote lived for years in a cemetery surrounded by streets and buildings. It rarely left the forest of tombstones; it was never seen by its human neighbors.
In yet another a pair of coyotes raised a litter of pups on the top of a parking garage adjacent to a football stadium. Like the others, these animals had learned human habits so well they survived, even thrived, in conditions just 30 years ago considered inhospitable for its species.
The vignettes are among thousands of observations recorded by Stanley Gehrt and his fellow scientists with the Urban Coyote Research Project. All were made in Chicago or its expansive metro area.
And all are helping inform a new understanding of a remarkable species that has been around for millenia but is now demonstrating an uncanny ability to adapt and live in close association with humans and in human-built environments.
“(Coyotes) spend a lot of time watching us and learning,” said Gehrt, professor of wildlife ecology at The Ohio State University and chair of the Center for Wildlife Research at the Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation in Dundee, Illinois. “Consequently we largely coexist with them without even knowing it.”
Gehrt, with Kerry Luft, is co-author of the recently-released book “Coyotes Among Us, Secrets of the City’s Top Predator.”
The book includes the history of the coyote in North America, a native predator species widely persecuted and pursued, including to protect livestock, and mostly without protection by game laws since America was founded.
But it devotes most of its 125 pages to stories and findings from Gehrt’s urban coyote research. The passages are enlightening and at times jaw-dropping.
“We are seeing coyotes live in conditions that even we wouldn’t have expected until it was documented,” Gehrt said in a phone interview. “What we are learning is they are a brilliant survivor.”
Coyotes are a member of the Canidae family, which includes wolves, foxes, jackals and domestic dogs. Coyotes have been around about 1 million years, Gehrt said.
Historical records from the 1600s to the late 1800s indicate the coyote’s range was mostly restricted to plains and deserts west of the Mississippi River.
The coyote occupied the midsize carnivore niche, Gehrt said, hunting mostly small prey and scavenging kills made by larger predators such as wolves and cougars.
This lifestyle - hunting prey while avoiding larger predators - is exactly the skill set the “wily coyote” uses today in urban and suburban settings.
In fact, humans are the most dangerous predator coyotes have ever known.
“If coyotes had opposable digits, they would probably use them to thumb their noses at our efforts to exterminate them while they claim residence in our own backyards,” Gehrt and Luft write in the book.
The coyote is one of the few species that have expanded their range as humans have developed the continent. In 1900 coyotes were still mostly found in the West, ranging from California and the Pacific Northwest south into Mexico.
But in the 20th century they began to move east, first through the south, then moving north and east. By the end of the 1980s coyotes had reached the East Coast, Gehrt said, and in the 2000s were in all 48 contiguous states plus Alaska. They had also trickled into Central America and in 2013 were south of the Panama Canal.
The movement into America’s cities was another migration unto itself.
Gehrt earned his doctorate in 1994 in fisheries and wildlife from the University of Missouri and that same year started work as research biologist at Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation outside Chicago. His role was to develop and conduct research on aspects of mammalian ecology and management of wildlife in urban areas.
He developed expertise with several species, including raccoons and bats, and in 2000 was asked to do a short study of coyotes.
“We had no idea what we were about to start,” Gehrt said.
The request set Gehrt on a path to found the Urban Coyote Research Project, the world’s largest study of the species. As the 21st century began, relatively little was known about how coyotes could survive in America’s biggest cities.
Gehrt captured and tagged coyote #1 on March 22, 2000, near O’Hare International Airport. The young female was in excellent health and weighed 29 pounds.
The researchers tracked #1 through five municipalities until it settled in a territory with a mate and started a pack. They were able to follow #1 for 10 years, including two mates, six litters of pups and at least 38 offspring.
Gehrt said #1 was “very street smart” and was once observed crossing eight lanes of traffic on Interstate Highway 290.
The animal, the first of more than 1,500 in the study through this month, taught the researchers one of the primary keys to urban coyote survival: they mostly come out at night.
In most cities coyotes are the largest wild predator. They mostly eat wild prey, Gehrt has learned, including cottontail rabbits, mice and voles. But at times they utilize human foods.
They pose the most direct conflicts with humans when they attack pets, and even more rarely, humans. From 2000 to the present, 1% to 4% of coyotes monitored annually by Gehrt have been identified as nuisances and removed.
In nearly all cases the coyote had not actually attacked or injured a pet or person but was becoming too obvious to people and considered a threat, including at airports.
Thus Gehrt said urban coyotes represent a risk that was not present in most cities before coyotes expanded their range. Part of his research is devoted to measuring that risk.
Among Gehrt’s findings: urban coyotes are almost exclusively nocturnal and travel farther distances and have larger territories than more suburban coyotes; urban coyotes have home ranges of about 3.5 square miles, while suburban coyotes have ranges of about 0.5 square miles; urban coyotes can learn human traffic patterns and know the safest times and locations to cross roads; and perhaps most importantly, urban coyotes learn where and when humans are most active and mostly arrange their activities to avoid us.
Coyote #441, a female with a territory in downtown Chicago, illustrated how a relatively large wild animal can live in a crowded urban environment.
Gehrt said #441 liked to rest during the day on the island in the South Pond of the Lincoln Park Zoo or in a wooded spot at a marina about 0.75 miles away. Both areas were secluded from people.
But she also hid in a bush near the entrance to the Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool, a gated area bordering the zoo and about 100 yards from busy Fullerton Avenue.
One morning during his research Gehrt watched as #441 rested in the shade on a berm inside the main gate. Although the coyote was just 20 feet from the main walkway, 50 people passed by without ever seeing the animal.
Coyote #441 lived in the Lincoln Park area for at least five years, whelping at least two litters and never having a conflict with humans, Gehrt said.
To survive in the city - or anywhere else - coyotes must avoid humans as much as possible.
The most common cause of mortality to coyotes is vehicle collisions, Gehrt said. Another relatively common cause of death is poisoning, typically ingested by the coyote after it ate a rodent that had consumed the poison.
In 2012 Gehrt started analyzing isotopes in coyote whiskers to determine their diets. The assumption was urban coyotes did well partially because they were taking advantage of human-linked foods.
“Many people thought coyotes were living off us, eating our trash and killing and feeding on our pets,” Gehrt said.
The whisker analyses showed coyotes, much like humans, are highly individualistic in their diets. And in fact most coyotes’ diets were dominated by natural foods such as voles, mice and rabbits, with only a minority relying heavily on human foods.
The dietary work also showed coyotes ate fruit; some are known to climb trees, Gehrt said.
And to further highlight the diversity of coyote diets, the researchers videotaped a coyote slurping earthworms “for twenty minutes as if they were strands of linguine.” The behavior had not been previously reported.
The relative abundance of foods in urban areas is maintained across seasons and years and is reflected in heavier animals and larger litter sizes., Gehrt said.
Over the first 12 years of the project, coyotes averaged eight pups per litter in the Chicago study area, whereas in rural areas the average is five to six, Gehrt said.
The heaviest coyote in the Urban Coyote Research Project was a 43pound male.
While most of the coyotes in the study stay relatively close to where they were born, some disperse. At least six coyotes have dispersed from Chicago to Milwaukee, Gehrt said, including one that then decided to return to Illinois. It was killed when struck by a vehicle.
The longest dispersal was from Chicago to Lansing, Michigan, a distance of 217 miles by highway.
Gehrt said while coyotes are relatively new to urban environments they have already shown benefits to humans. For example, coyotes help control nuisance levels of some native wildlife such as white-tailed deer and Canada geese in areas they can’t be hunted by humans.
Coyotes also are helpful as predators of introduced species such as rats.
And just like everywhere coyotes live, the urban animals in Gehrt’s study have shown they are here to stay. Efforts to eliminate coyotes are doomed to fail.
“If you live in a city or a suburb in Wisconsin or Illinois, you might not realize it but have a coyote living near you, no doubt about it,” Gehrt said. “They are remarkable animals and it’s in our best interests to find the best ways to co-exist. They have a lot to teach us, and we intend to keep learning from them into the future.”
Coyote book: “Coyotes Among Us, Secrets of the City’s Top Predator” by Stanley Gehrt with Kerry Luft is a 125page, hardbound book published by Flashpoint Books in Seattle. The book covers the history of coyotes and especially the species’ most recent adaptations to urban environments. Stories of Gehrt’s coyote research in Chicago, told throughout the book, allow unique and valuable insight into the lives of this predator that has adapted to not just live but thrive in new areas and in close association with humans. It is $29.99 and available at flashpointbooks.com.
Coyote meeting: Milwaukee County Parks and Department of Natural Resources on Monday will host a meeting titled “Living with Urban Coyotes.” The free event will be educational and include tips to avoid conflicts with coyotes. It will be led by Emilie Burmeister, conservation biologist with Milwaukee County Parks, and Jessica Knackert, DNR wildlife educator. The meeting will be held from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Monday at Cudahy Family Library, 3500 Library Drive, Cudahy. No advance registration is required.