Vancouver Learns to Live With Pet-Eating CoyotesVANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) -- An elderly woman was walking her small dog near a park in the heart of Vancouver when a coyote suddenly appeared. A few seconds later the woman's pet was a meal for the coyote.
Coyotes have found a comfortable home in Canada's third-largest city. With reports of aggressive animals attacking pets -- and even stalking children -- wildlife officials say it is the people who will have to adapt.
"For some reason this year a few of the coyotes are becoming much bolder around the downtown core, such as the pet attacks, and this is causing us some concern," said Michael Macintosh of the Vancouver Parks Board.
Relatives of dogs and wolves, coyotes weigh around 30 pounds and have bushy black-tipped tails, which are their distinguishing feature. They are smart and adaptable in their diet, eating everything from small animals to garbage.
Their intelligence and adaptability have allowed them to spread in recent decades from their native range in the western United States across North America.
They are believed to have arrived in the Vancouver area in the early 1980s. The city is an ideal breeding ground with its large wooded parks next to residential neighborhoods. There is plenty of food and there are no natural predators.
"It was a marriage made in heaven," Macintosh said.
No serious human injury yet
The animal's mobility makes it almost impossible to get an exact count, but it is estimated there are about 2,000 coyotes living in the Vancouver area and 200 in the city itself.
As the coyote population has increased, so too have confrontations with people. Wildlife officers were forced to shoot a coyote in a popular park recently after it attacked several pets and bit a small girl.
Wildlife officials have heard other reports of coyotes attacking small dogs on leashes or trying to follow dog owners who escape into buildings with their pets. No serious human injuries have been reported yet.
An expert on urban coyotes said the aggression is a result of people feeding the animals. "Once a coyote loses its fear of people it becomes a problem," said Kristine Lampa of the Stanley Park Ecology Society.
An autopsy on the animal that was shot found it had dined on a meal of cooked chicken shortly before it was killed.
Pet owners are being urged to be careful.
"Unfortunately, coyotes are unable to differentiate between prey species. ... It is this characteristic that gets coyotes into trouble with people," a recent information handout from the provincial Ministry of Environment warned dryly.
'Not all coyotes are bad coyotes'
Cat owners are being urged not to allow their pets outside in areas where coyotes are known to live and dogs owners are urged to be aggressive toward any coyote that approaches their pet, even if it looks friendly.
"If you think that a coyote is trying to play with your dog or mate with your dog, it is probably trying to eat your dog," Lampa said.
Wildlife officials have launched a public awareness campaign, in part because reducing the coyote population is considered almost impossible for both scientific and political reasons. The city's parks department was hit with angry phone calls after an erroneous newspaper report that it planned to cull the animals by shooting them, and rules now allow shooting only animals that pose a direct threat to human safety.
"Not all coyotes are bad coyotes," said Dennis Pemble, a provincial wildlife control officer.
Relocating the coyotes has been ruled out because they are very difficult to capture. "They are very intelligent animals ... no self-respecting coyote is going to go near a trap," Macintosh said.
Authorities use tranquilizer darts on larger animals such as bears and cougars that occasionally wander into the Vancouver area, but they say the coyote's smaller size makes it almost impossible to shoot without killing it.
In any case, new coyotes would likely move into the city to replace animals that are killed or moved, officials said.
Reacting to a confrontation
Because of the coyote's thick fur and bushy tail, Lampa said, many people think they are bigger than they really are and are afraid to stand up to coyotes that approach them in search of a meal.
"Don't look like prey. Stand up. Make noise. Yell at them. If you do that they should high-tail it out of there," she said.
Officials say if people stop giving coyotes easy sources of food they will turn their attention to rats and other animals that are readily available in the temperate Vancouver area.