Coyotes in the city face a new type of threat
As populations in urban centers grow, some experts argue killing will be self-defeating
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Dennis Murphy sniffed the bobcat urine he uses to lure his prey. He checked the silencer on his AR-15 assault rifle and loaded a few snares into his Ford pickup. “Let’s go kill some coyotes,” he said. But he was not heading for the wilderness. Murphy’s stalking ground is on the contentious new frontier where hunters are clashing with conservationists: cities and suburbs.
Coyotes are largely associated with their ancestral bastions in the wildlands of the American West, but they are highly adaptable, and in recent years they have been colonizing large population centers throughout North America. The hunters have come after them, stalking the predators in settings like strip mall parking lots, housing tract cul-desacs, and plazas in the shadow of skyscrapers.
The growing popularity of urban hunting is igniting a fierce debate over the perils and benefits coyotes pose in populated areas, and whether city dwellers ought to adapt
to living alongside a cunning predator that has thrived since one of its top adversaries, the gray wolf, has been all but wiped out in much of the continent.
Enthusiasts for the urban coyote chase contend that they are helping to limit the spread of a pest that federal authorities already kill by the tens of thousands every year in eradication projects. Some also concede that they enjoy the thrill of urban hunting, which requires different kinds of marksmanship.
“Coyotes are a formidable predator, moving into the places where we take our kids to school and walk our pets,” said Murphy, 59, a former Army Green Beret who has hunted bears in Alaska and now deals in the pelts of coyotes he kills in Columbus.
Some carnivore ecologists argue, though, that moving the hunt into cities will be selfdefeating. They say it replicates the very tactics that have allowed coyotes to prosper despite a concerted onslaught against them. In an adaptation that biologists call fission-fusion, when coyotes come under pressure from hunters, their packs split up into lone animals and pairs, they start producing much larger litters, and they migrate into new areas.
Coyotes can be hunted legally in many built-up areas, but it sometimes leads to tragic mishaps. In New York state, a hunter in the upstate town of Sweden said he thought he was aiming his rifle at a coyote in February when he mistakenly shot a man in the abdomen. The hunter was charged with second-degree assault.
Urban hunters and their prey are not limited to smaller towns and cities. Reports of coyote killings have come from major metropolitan areas like Los Angeles and the suburbs of Chicago. As such episodes become more common, biologists say they cannot help marveling at the animal’s resilience and adaptability.
Coyotes are omnivores, and will eat anything from rodents to berries, not to mention the discarded remains of a fast-food order. In cities, they tend to elude detection by turning strictly nocturnal, often building dens in quiet alleyways or parking garages.
“Humans have killed millions of coyotes, but this is a species that’s adapted by moving in right next to us, their main predators,” said Stanley D. Gehrt, a wildlife ecologist at Ohio State University who describes coyotes as “humbling animals.”
While ranchers and farmers are often more than ready to have someone go after coyotes on their land, some urban hunters say they get a very different reception, and have to tread carefully.
Murphy, whose day job is police chief of Gahanna, a suburb near Columbus, calls himself an unapologetic coyote hunter. A decade ago, he started a side business, Wildlife Balance Solutions, catering to homeowners who want to rid their land of nuisance animals like raccoons, muskrats and skunks.
“But the most challenging adversary we have in these parts is the coyote,” Murphy said. Coyotes can run at speeds of up to 40 mph, he noted, and are known to occasionally eat household pets like cats or small dogs.
Coyotes have a fearful reputation, but opponents of coyote hunting say the threat they actually pose to humans has been greatly overblown.
Most coyotes do their best to avoid direct contact with people. Documented human fatalities from coyote attacks have been rarer still in recent decades, including a 3-year-old girl in Glendale, Calif., in 1981.
Moreover, biologists say that urban coyotes actually benefit humans by eating rodents like rats, which can spread disease, and by culling feral cats, which prey on songbirds.
“The coyotes among us provide an opportunity to live next to an animal indigenous to North America whose roots go back 5 million years,” said Dan Flores, a historian who explored the species’ evolution in his book Coyote America.
“This is a gift,” he emphasized, “to be reminded that we still live in a world that’s wild.”