Coyote-related calls down, but brazen behaviour on rise

Despite fewer phone-ins to 311, expert says evidence shows animals becoming bolder

Though 311 calls about coyotes have dipped slightly year over year, one local expert says the urban canines are growing more habituated to humans.

Colleen Cassady St. Clair is a University of Alberta biological sciences professor who runs the Edmonton Urban Coyote Project. She’s seen evidence that coyotes in the city are becoming more brazen in their interactions with people.

“I’ve had, three times in the last year, experiences myself with coyotes where the coyotes acted much bolder than I’ve experienced in the city before,” she said. “That’s where my impression comes from that there’s a bit of a shift going on in behaviour.”

One of those sightings took place in March outside an Edmonton school.

Cassady St. Clair has also seen an uptick in emails sent to her lab describing aggressive coyote

behaviour, something she said is likely a trend that extends beyond Edmonton.

She hypothesizes that coyotes are likely becoming more confident because of success obtaining food from people, or from areas populated by people.

“It’s a phenomenon that’s known in bears as food conditioning and it’s well-known in bears to cause conflict,” Cassady St. Clair said. “My top suggestion to what’s changed is that more animals are having that experience more often.”

Also a factor in urban coyote attraction is Edmonton’s geography, including the river valley, which resembles coyotes’ natural grassland habitat.

In 2018, Edmonton 311 received 1,717 coyote-related calls through Nov. 18. This year, that number has dropped to 1,666 over the same period.

That still means city officials deal with many coyote calls each day.

They deal with complaints based on severity.

“If it’s just a sighting, we’ll take a look at where the sighting happened and if the citizen requires a callback,” said Zain Haji, a park ranger with the City of Edmonton.

“If there’s an aggressive coyote ... we would attend that property, we would talk to the citizen and we would educate that citizen about how to coexist with coyotes.”

The advice Haji gives is to restrict access to food by keeping garbage bins closed. He also said people should attempt not to engage with coyotes and alter their walking path if they encounter one of the canines.

Cassady St. Clair personally recommends that anyone who encounters a coyote and feels threatened should act aggressively by waving their arms and shouting in a deep voice.

The city avoids lethal management of coyote populations. Instead, they “haze” the critters through similar techniques to what Cassady St. Clair describes, using tools like air horns.