Coyote Biology, Management, & Coexistence - Dave Wattles, PhD, Black Bear and Furbearer Biologist
DAVE>> Hello, my name is Dave Wattles. I'm the black bear and furbearer biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. This presentation is designed to provide you some basic information about coyote biology and ecology and how that influences coyote behavior and their presence in your community. Then finally how we can use that information to learn to co-exist with coyotes in Massachusetts.
So, I'm going to start by talking about coyote natural history. Coyotes are a medium-sized candid they are a member of the dog family. They're about the size of a border collie. So, females average around 35 to 40 pounds males about 35 up to 50 pounds. It is possible but it's very rare for coyotes to exceed 50 pounds. They're about four to five feet from nose to tip of the tail. They have long thin legs and a long narrow nose and can be a very wide variety of colors. This picture shows you a typical coyote that is a mix of white and black, reddish and blonde colors, but they could be entirely black, entirely reddish, or any combination in between, so they can have a very widely varied appearance. They also have a very thick fur coat to the point that, in winter, when they have their full coat and it's cold and that coat is puffed up, they can look substantially larger than they actually are. So, it's not uncommon for us to get reports of coyotes that are the size of German Shepherds or whatnot, but in reality, it's the winter coat that is making them look much larger where you see them in a summer coat on the right and they're actually quite a thin canid.
Coyotes weren't historically found in the eastern United States. Their historic range was in the grasslands and Great Plains of the central parts of the continent, up into Canada and down into Mexico. The eastern United States was primarily forested prior to European colonization, but when Europeans came, the forests were cut down and converted into agriculture, opening up the forest. As well as the main competitors of coyotes, wolves and mountain lions, were largely extirpated. These changing conditions allowed coyotes to very rapidly expand their range from the historic range. At the time when they did this, the first coyotes that were dispersing to the east mated with the low densities of gray wolves that remained in the Great Lake areas of Canada, as well as with domestic dogs. This resulted in the animal that colonized the east, the eastern coyote, being of mixed genetic background. They're still predominantly coyote in their genetic makeup with 60 to 85 percent being western coyote. Lesser amounts, 8 to 25 percent wolf, and 8 to 11 percent domestic dog. Again, this is not a new phenomenon in the term “eastern coyote” denotes this different animal from the western coyote. Coyotes first arrived in Massachusetts in the 1950s. The towns you see in red here are those where we had confirmed and documented the presence of coyotes. By 1980, they'd rapidly spread throughout much of the state. This is where again we had confirmed sightings, but they obviously were in many places in between at this point. By 1990, they've been confirmed in most of the western three quarters of Massachusetts as well as down in the cape and southeast Mass. And by 2000, they've been confirmed in every city and town in mainland Massachusetts. Prior to this, coyote densities had begun to increase in Massachusetts. We are reaching a point where essentially all territories were filled, which is where we're at today, and coyotes now exist at medium to high densities throughout Massachusetts.
What you saw just happened in Massachusetts was mirrored throughout the eastern United States, and one of the reasons that coyotes were able to spread their range and adapt to such a wide geographic area so rapidly is their highly opportunistic diet and their ability to adapt to a wide range of habitat types. Coyotes are omnivorous and highly opportunistic in the way they eat. But the bulk of their diet is made up of rodents and small mammals. So, squirrels and chipmunks, woodchucks, rabbits, mice, voles, rats make up the bulk of their prey. They'll also opportunistically take advantage of ground nesting birds and bird eggs. They'll eat insects in the summer, like larger insects like crickets and grasshoppers when they're available. And it's very common to find coyote scats that are entirely composed of fruit. So, apples, blueberries, raspberries, grapes, cherries can all be part of their diet. They will also opportunistically prey on white-tailed deer fawn, particularly in the early summer shortly after fawns have been born when they're highly susceptible to predation from coyotes but also from black bear and bobcat in Massachusetts. And they'll readily scavenge on carrion or dead animals throughout the year but also in the hunting season when those animal carcasses are plentiful on the landscape.
Coyotes are able to exploit a wide variety of urban and suburban environments as well, and it's because they have the ability to take advantage of human-associated foods. One of the biggest foods that draws wildlife, not just birds, to our backyards is bird feeders and it's one of the main drivers of human-wildlife conflict because it's drawing all these animals into our yards. Coyotes will not only feed at the bird seed and suet that we put out, but also the squirrels, the chipmunks, the mice, the rats that are attracted to the bird seed on the ground, as we said, make up the bulk of their natural prey base. Coyotes also would readily take advantage of unsecured garbage and compost. This is both at households as well as businesses. So, trash that's outside and can be accessed by coyotes, dumpsters that are overflowing, are easy meals. Even the rotting fruits and vegetables in your compost pile are a free meal for a coyote. They'll also readily take advantage of pet food that's left outside both for our pets and for individuals who feed stray cats. And, unfortunately, coyotes will also see our pets as potential prey items. Coyotes can't distinguish between cats and outdoor dogs as compared to any other animal or prey item that they might encounter in the wild. So, unfortunately, despite it being a rather tragic thing when it occurs, they will readily prey on our pets. They'll also readily feed in gardens and fruit trees have fruit that's dropped out of trees, apples, even if it's rotting on the ground, they'll feed on those. They'll take advantage of livestock, both free-ranging chickens as well as medium and large size livestock like goats and sheep, particularly the young, so it's important to practice good husbandry practices and make sure your livestock and your chickens are well secured. And, unfortunately, there are also those individuals that are intentionally feeding coyotes. This figure is from a GPS collar study of coyotes in Rhode Island and all the dots in the center are different times that a coyote has been located at this one property where there was a intentional feeding occurring. You can see all the movement paths that draw this coyote into this one location. And so this has a number of negative consequences for the community at large. One, it's training coyotes to come to backyards to try to find food. It's increasing the general presence of coyotes in the overall area. But most importantly it's teaching coyotes to directly associate people with food. And, unfortunately, this is the main driver of the recent bites of people by coyotes in Massachusetts. Almost invariably, when there's a coyote who bites someone in Massachusetts these days, someone in the community is intentionally feeding coyotes. So this underlines the importance of never intentionally feeding wildlife. And if you know someone in your community that's intentionally feeding coyotes or other wildlife, notify your Animal Control Officer, your police, your Board of Health, they have the ability to potentially stop it or contact us and we can try to address it.
Because they can exploit such a wide variety of foods, they can use a variety of habitat types. Natural grasslands and shrubby areas, which was their native range, agricultural areas, or the forests and wetlands that make up our natural communities in Massachusetts. Again, because of the human-associated foods, they can also adapt and heavily utilize suburban and urban areas as well. And because the landscape of Massachusetts and much of the rest of the eastern United States is made up of a variety of these habitat types, wetlands, forest patches, suburban areas, agricultural areas, urban areas, that all provide a variety of food sources, the eastern United States is a very rich environment for coyotes to survive and thrive in, which is why they can live at such high densities here. Including in urban places like Boston. In urban areas, coyotes use a variety of the forest preserves and wetland preserves, other forest parks, golf courses, cemeteries, abandoned lots, the small strips and blocks of forest between houses and neighborhoods, to link together a series of natural or semi-natural habitats that they can make up a home range. They then move through the neighborhoods to utilize all the human-associated foods that we provide in almost every community in Massachusetts. And as a result, we have thriving wildlife and coyote populations in places even as busy as Boston.
There are several annual events in the life cycle of coyotes that are important for influencing their behavior as well as their interaction with people. One of the biggest ones is the mating season for coyotes, which takes place in February and March. This is the time of year where coyotes are actively defending their territories against other coyotes in an attempt to maintain dominance in their territory, establish a mate so they can raise pups in the coming months. It's this time of year where we tend to see high levels of aggression towards large and medium-sized dogs. Similar to small dogs and cats that they see as prey items, they interpret these larger dogs the same way they would another coyote in their territory, as a potential threat, and therefore they can be aggressive towards them. A couple months later in April and May is when they're giving birth to their pups. Coyotes will find a den and they'll give birth to the pups in the den and then they're tied to that den for the next eight to ten weeks while the pups are young and growing. If you're walking your dog in a natural area along a trail, a rail trail perhaps, and you have a coyote that is aggressive towards you and your dog, it's a distinct possibility at this time of year that there may be a den in the area, particularly if you know you witness this aggression on more than one occasion. If that's the case, you likely want to avoid that area for the next several weeks until the pups are large enough and they abandon the den. Later in the summer after the pups have grown and they can move more widely, they start to go out with different members of the family group. They'll go off in small groups with an adult and maybe one or two pups and the adults show the pups where to find food, how to move across the landscape, and essentially how to be a coyote. By the fall, those pups that are born in spring are nearly fully grown and so we can get reports of an explosion in the coyote population in any area. And this is because in the past where you may have had the three to five adults in a family group, you now have just as many pups potentially so there can be a doubling of the local population if the pups are included. This is a temporary thing because most of those pups are going to disperse and be on their own at this time of year and is part of the annual cycle and the relative peak of coyotes throughout the year in Massachusetts. But it doesn't indicate that there's going to be just that many more coyotes in the area moving forward.
One of the things we often hear from the public is concerns about coyote howling, is that there's some malicious intent or that's an indication that they're going to go out and kill something. And that's just simply not the case. Howling is just a means of coyotes communicating. It's how family members of the pack or the family group communicate amongst themselves. Coyotes don't often travel as the entire pack or family group. Often it's an individual or two that go out and try to find food and are moving through different parts of their territory. They then howl as a means of letting each other know where they are and then so they can come back together. They also howl to defend their territory against other coyote family groups or transient individuals and so they mark and protect their territory in that way. They use it to attract a mate in the breeding season. And then the pups howl is they're learning to communicate and become a coyote as well. [coyote howling]. So that's an example of coyotes howling. It can be very difficult to determine how many animals there are just by listening to the howling. You know a few animals can sound like many because they can make a wide variety of sounds but again, it's just them communicating and not a sign of aggression.
I've hinted at this a couple times, but coyote populations are composed primarily of family groups. This is related family members that actively defend a territory against other coyote packs or family groups and it's composed of an alpha or the mated pair. Those are the ones that produce pups every spring. Often there are several subordinate members of the family group. These are often pups from a previous litter or potentially subordinate sibling of one of the alpha pair. And then the pups that are born every spring. Again these are highly territorial animals that actively defend their territory against other coyotes. Another key component of coyote family groups are transients. These are individuals that have dispersed from their family groups and are constantly trying to establish and find a territory of their own and find a mate. They're solitary and they live kind of in and amongst all the different territories of different family groups, trying to scratch out a living. And again, having constantly trying to find a mate. Which is key in terms of how coyote populations function and why they're so resistant to management and mortality that we'll talk about later.
The number of coyotes found in any area is strongly driven by the availability of food. Simply speaking, the more food there is, the more coyotes you're going to have in any area. And this is because they have an extraordinary ability to produce pups. If a female is in good body condition because there's a lot of food, she can produce very large litters. She can produce a dozen or more pups in a single litter. The pups are going to be born robust because she's in good condition. She's going to have a lot of milk to provide them, a lot of food to provide them, so they're going to have high survival rates. And they're also going to mature very quickly because there's a lot of food for them to eat so many of them can breed at a very young age. And not many of them will disperse. They'll actually remain in the family room because there's enough food to go around so they don't actually have to disperse. The overall result in these situations is typically coyotes can survive in smaller territories because they don't need to use as much territory to meet their life history needs. And you tend to have lots of coyotes in those territories so overall you have very high coyote densities. Kind of counterintuitively, we tend to see higher coyote densities like this in urban and suburban areas than we do in rural areas. And this is because of all the human-associated foods that supplement coyote diets and provide a lot of food resources for coyotes there.
The exact opposite occurs if food resources are scarce. They'll have smaller litter sizes. The female may not have as much milk or as much food to bring back to feed the pups, so you can have lower pup survival. They don't mature as quickly so you have fewer breeding individuals, and the family groups tend to be smaller because the pups that are born and when they mature, they're forced to disperse. There's not enough food to go around and so they're not tolerated by their parents. In these situations we tend to have larger territories because the coyotes need larger areas to support their needs. And you tend to have fewer animals in those territories. So, overall a lower coyote density. And this is what we tend to see in our more natural habitats in Massachusetts, again, where they're wholly dependent on natural foods.
I'm now going to talk about management of coyote populations. The main means we have as wildlife managers of managing wildlife populations are through our regulated hunting and trapping seasons and we have a regulated hunting and trapping season for coyotes in Massachusetts. The hunting season runs from mid-October to early March and it's the shortest open season for coyotes of any state in the country and we're one of only four states that does not have year-round coyote hunting. And we do have some reasons for this. The main reason for hunting coyotes is for the value of their pelt. And during the summer when our season is closed the pelt has essentially no value and so we don't support the hunting of the animal at that time. Additionally, the season is closed and, most importantly, is closed at the time of year when they're raising their pups and when the pups are wholly dependent on their parents for care. And so by closing the season at this time we provide protections to the pups that ensures the sustainability of coyotes on the landscape. In suburban areas, there are some limitations to where coyotes can be hunted. There are laws in Massachusetts that control where you can hunt animals and how close to roads and houses you can be when you're discharging a firearm and there are also local ordinances that prohibit the discharge of firearms in some towns. This figure is from Gloucester. All the areas in red show those buffers or discharge setbacks around houses and roads where hunting is prohibited. This is from a presentation that we gave there where almost all the conflict in Gloucester was occurring in the downtown developed areas but it shows that in those areas there's essentially no hunting of coyotes and so no removal of coyotes through the hunting season because of discharge setbacks and other limitations. There's also a short trapping season in Massachusetts in the month of November but traps are restricted to box traps for reasons I'll speak about in a minute. And as a result there's essentially no trapping in Massachusetts. We on average take less than one coyote per year in our trapping season. And the reason for this is because the traps that are effective for catching coyote were made illegal by a ballot referendum in 1996. This being foothold traps and cable restraints, are what people commonly think of as snares. I should note that these are the traps that I would use as a research biologist to catch coyotes for a research project where obviously my goal would be to catch them uninjured and healthy so they're representative of wild coyotes. There have been a lot of modifications to these traps to make them safe and effective so they don't injure the animal that they capture and so that animals that aren't targeted can be released safely. That being said, they're illegal in Massachusetts for any purpose and the only trap that you can use is a box trap. Coyotes are extremely wary and do not want to readily enter a box trap. You can catch a coyote in a box trap but you have to lock the trap open for a period of many many weeks to months before you can maybe get a coyote comfortable to enter the trap and might be able to capture it or not but it's really not effective and it's not something that is done in Massachusetts. So because of the limitations on where animals can be hunted as well as the trapping ban, there are essentially no coyotes that are removed from our hunting and trapping seasons in suburban and urban areas in Massachusetts.
Does this matter in terms of our ability to manage coyote populations? If we had unlimited hunting and trapping in Massachusetts, could we reduce the overall coyote population? And surprisingly the answer to that is no. Studies have shown that you actually have to remove over 70 percent of a coyote population year after year after year after year to have tiny incremental decreases in the population over time. So even though we don't have the ability to control coyotes in suburban and urban areas through hunting, it really doesn't make that much difference in terms of the overall number of coyotes we would have on the landscape regardless. And there's reasons for this. So, what happens if we have mortality in population? For example, what if one of the members of the alpha pair is killed? Whether it's hunting or trapping or another reason. Remember you have transients that are constantly trying to find a mate and they very quickly come in and will mate with the alpha pair so that territory in that family group continues to function as it did before. Or potentially a subordinate member will come up and fill that role. What if you lose both family members? You could have a situation like this, where a subordinate member comes up, it mates with a transient, and again that family group continues to function and exist as it did before. Or if one family member is killed and another leaves, again, you could have a situation like this, and again it continues to function as normal. Additionally, if you have hunting, if you have mortality from any reason in the population, whether it's vehicle collisions, disease, hunting, or other factors, yes, it does temporarily reduce the population as you see here. But what that does, is that decreases the competition for the resources or the food that was in that area making more resources for those coyotes that remain. We already talked about how coyotes can respond to that and produce a lot of pups and this is exactly what they do. They have very high reproductive potential and very quickly the population recovers so that within a year you have this mortality, but it is more than compensated for by pup production and so you tend to have fluctuations in the population but they tend to be about the same level over time. And so this is why we talk about the limited ability to manage or control coyote populations long-term.
People often want to know how many coyotes we have in Massachusetts and we can safely say there's somewhere around 10,000 or so coyotes. It's an imprecise number, but it's something that we can estimate with using their biological information. So we can come up with an estimate of the approximate number of coyote territories that Massachusetts can hold. And then we do this by looking up their home range sizes for suburban in rural areas from studies elsewhere. We also know the area of those habitats that are available in Massachusetts and we can come up with that number of territories as a result. We also know the approximate family group composition of coyotes, that is the alpha pair plus multiple subordinates. Here we use three. We know that coyote populations are comprised of about 30 percent transients of the pre-pupping or pre-welt population. And then we can come up with a minimum and maximum number of pups. Here we use 4 to 6 with 50 percent pup survival. And that's how we can come up with an approximate number of coyotes in Massachusetts.
And as I said we do have a hunting season in Massachusetts and for the past 15 years or so when our populations of coyotes have been at this or close to this current level and we've had consistent coyote hunting regulations, we've taken somewhere around 5 to 700 coyotes per year in our hunting season. And so does this have any impact on our population? And the answer is no. And I'll compare us to South Carolina. South Carolina is approximately 3 times the size of Massachusetts. Every year, and so you could estimate that they have roughly 3 times the number of coyotes. Every year, they estimate they take 25 to 30,000 coyotes in their hunting and trapping seasons and they've done that every year for the past 10 to 15 years. So that means they take 25 to 30,000 coyotes and they're 25 to 30,000 coyotes more to be taken again the next year. And so the few coyotes we take in our hunting season have very very limited impact on our population. And this is why we say the approximate distribution and density of coyotes we have in Massachusetts now is what we're going to have in the future. And so this then leads us to the need to coexist with coyotes and learn to live with coyotes on the landscape because they're going to be part of our natural community and part of our landscape moving forward.
Unfortunately, coyotes are species that causes conflict with people. The vast majority of the conflict is from perceived threats. This is where the mere presence of a coyote in someone's neighborhood or yard is a threat to them. And this is very common perception that people have in Massachusetts and we receive hundreds of calls like this every single year. Far more serious, and really the most serious form of regular conflict we experience with coyotes, is depredation or attacks on dog and cats by coyotes. As I mentioned before, this is normal behavior for unsupervised dogs and cats and it's very common. But it's underreported to us as an agency. We only get 10 or 15, 20 reports per year of pets being attacked but I'm quite often contacted by reporters who will reference a couple of incidents in a town that has never been reported to us and asked me to comment on them. Or if I speak to an Animal Control Officer, they can tell me about 4, 5, 6 incidents in the previous handful of months in their town where coyotes have taken pet. And so we know it's occurring very regularly. There's also livestock depredation that I mentioned. This is relatively uncommon mostly because these practices aren't super common in Massachusetts, but it can be very costly to those individuals that experience it. I'm not going to talk in great detail about livestock depredation and how to prevent it in this talk, but if you are experiencing livestock depredation, please contact us and we'd be happy to assist you. And the most serious type of conflict is obviously bites of people. We have confirmed that there have been 35 reports or incidents where coyote has bitten a person in Massachusetts and these have increased in recent years. A half dozen years ago, we were probably having 1 to 2 per year reported but in the last 3 or 4 years, it's been 4 or 5 and 6 reports. But as I mentioned before, almost all of the recent incidents can directly be tied to intentional feeding of coyotes by people. With the absence of intentional feeding driving these bites, coyote bites of people are very very minimal. The good news that even with the bites, all these types of conflicts can largely be prevented and we can coexist with coyotes.
There are lots of different types of behavior that coyotes display and some of this is normal behavior that doesn't pose a public safety threat and others do. Frequent use of residential areas or frequent daytime activity is completely normal. Attacks on unsupervised pets, whether at night or during the day, is normal behavior. And these behaviors don't constitute a public safety threat. There are however those behaviors that do constitute a public safety threat. These are attacks of pets on leash when someone is directly standing next to a pet and the coyote still feels comfortable enough to come up and attack that pet. When coyotes are closely following or pursuing or surrounding people or don't flee when they're heavily harassed. This is bold behavior. And obviously physical attacks of people is aggressive behavior and poses a public safety threat. I'm going to talk first about those issues that don't cause a public safety threat and how to prevent them and reduce them and then talk about the latter.
Most of the interactions we have with coyotes in our communities aren't true conflicts. It's just merely the presence of coyotes in our communities. And it's important to remember that coyotes live in every city and town in Massachusetts. There's high levels of interaction between people and coyotes. They're in yards, they're in neighborhoods, they're next to schools, and they're next to playgrounds without serious conflict. So simply seeing a your coyote in your yard or neighborhood is normal behavior. Having it observe you mow your lawn, out during the day, or watch you while you're walking the dog is normal behavior that doesn't really constitute conflict. It's important to remember too what a suburban or urban coyote is. It's a coyote that is born and raised in that suburban or urban town that you're living in. So the cars, the people, the people walking dogs, your homes, the playset, the roads, those are as much of its natural landscape as are the trees, the grass, the bushes, and the shrubs. And so they're used to seeing these things on a daily basis. They're used to the sights and sounds of modern society. This is why an urban-suburban coyote doesn't necessarily respond when it sees you out in its yard. It may look at you and just kind of stand there and then slowly go about its business. If it's walking down the road while you're walking your dog in the opposite direction, it's likely to keep walking at you. It's because your kind of background noise to it. It sees people every single day. It's important to remember this when we talk about what we can do to coexist with coyotes and how we can alter this behavior and potentially convince them that ignoring us isn't such a good idea. Because human behavior directly influences wildlife behavior and is a main driver of a lot of the conflict we experience with coyotes. As we mentioned, intentional feeding is the driver of most bites of people. When people intentionally feed coyotes, it causes that animal to associate people with food and then a lot of times they're going up to other people in a curious manner and biting them because they think they're going to get a food reward. Again, this should always be stopped. If you know of an individual who's intentionally feeding coyotes or other wildlife in your community, please contact us or local authorities to try to prevent this from happening. By far, more common is unintentional feeding of coyotes. This is the free meals that we provide coyotes around our homes, neighborhoods, and businesses that have several negative consequences. If we provide food to coyotes around our homes and businesses, it's training coyotes to look for food around our homes, increasing the amount of time they're going to spend in our yards and in our neighborhoods and increasing the interaction with people. It's also providing free meals to coyotes that actually supplements their natural diet and allows them to exist at higher densities in any area. So by providing these free meals to coyotes you're actually supporting more coyotes in your community. And then there's lack of a lack of harassment or submissive body language. Most interactions coyotes have with people or quite often the interactions they have with people, the person acts submissively towards the coyotes. It's important to remember that coyotes communicate with other coyotes using dominance behavior. That's how they determine who gets to mate within the family group. That's the how they defend their territories against other coyotes. The dominant animal wins. And so, if every time a coyote encounters a person walking down the street, the person quickly turns around and walks the other way, or ducks into a car, or runs into their house, or yells at the coyote from the back door and then quickly closes the door inside, that's basically telling that coyote that you're dominant here and you can continue to do whatever you want.
And so, by addressing these couple simple things we can alter coyote behavior and reduce the conflict we experience with them. There's really 3 main components to coexisting with coyotes. It’s removing the human-associated food sources. Again, this is gonna, if we remove the human-associated foods around our homes, it's going to reduce the attractant to our homes, to our yards for coyotes. And it's also not going to provide those free meals that supplement the population. Harassment, acting aggressively towards coyotes rather than passively reinforces the natural fear that coyotes and other wildlife do have of humans. And it will over time cause them to use a little more caution when they're walking down the road or into our yards. And really critically important is to supervise your pets outside. This means when dogs are outside, they are directly on a leash, a short leash, next to you. You watching your pet from the back door or from the deck while it's out in the yard is not supervising your pet. I can't tell you how often we get calls that say, I was watching the coyote from the deck and or the dog, excuse me, from a deck and the coyote came out of nowhere and grabbed it. Unfortunately, as far as that coyote is concerned, you may as well not be there. It's concentrating and looking at that dog and it doesn't even know you're there. And again, that's normal behavior unfortunately. So, directly supervising, your presence next to your dog is what's going to protect it. And then obviously, never intentionally feed wildlife.
So, there are a number of things around any household, any neighborhood in Massachusetts that is going to attract coyotes. So what here in this picture is going to do so? Almost everything. The bird feeder. As I said, it's a free meal and it attracts their prey. The squirrels and chipmunks, the rats, the mice, all are meals that coyotes are looking to hunt. The apples that have fallen from the tree, even if they're rotten, are a free meal for a coyote. So pick them up and clean them up so they're not there for them. The outdoor cat or the dog that's unsupervised. That's a potential prey item for a coyote. The unsecured garbage that can be accessed, whether it's at a dumpster, in your household, that's a free meal. The crawl space underneath the deck, a porch, a shed, that's actually a place where coyotes will den. It's nice and secure and is protected. Or it allows them to hide in your yard and have cover right in your property without being concerned. The brush pile, the thick bushes, the log pile that are on the edge or in your backyard provide cover again for coyotes to be able to hide right on the edge of your property. Addressing these few issues around your home can greatly reduce the attraction of your yard to coyotes and their presence in your community. Eliminating food sources. This is critical. Remove all bird feeders. There is no safe time of day, no safe time of year that bird feeders can be out. They have to be removed. Secure all garbage. So, this means in a secure container, preferably stored in a shed or in a garage until the morning of pickup. If it's businesses, make sure dumpsters are closed, they're locked, they're not overflowing, and they're emptied frequently enough. Using closed compost containers that coyotes can't access. And feed pets inside and don't feed strays. And obviously, never intentionally feed wildlife.
Hazing coyotes. By hazing coyotes, we mean making loud and offensive noises, not everyday sounds, that are going to scare them off. So this is blowing in the airhorn, a whistle, a foghorn, yelling and screaming at the top of your lungs, banging pots and pans, loud harsh noises that can be scary to coyotes. Use aggressive body language towards them. Aggressive posture and posturing, make eye contact, don't run or turn your back or retreat but charge at the animal. If you see a coyote in your yard, I want to see you running out your door at that animal, yelling and screaming, blowing an airhorn, banging pots and pans, waving your arms, and physically chasing that animal, stalking at that animal and chasing it out in the yard. You get to the edge of the yard, keep chasing it into your neighbor's yard and beyond. If you've got woods behind the house, go into the woods and keep pushing it away. Pick up sticks and bang them off of trees and throw them at the coyote. You're trying to teach it that your yard is not a place that it's welcome. Throw objects in its direction. So, balls, water balloons, small stones, and by this I mean pebbles. It's important to remember that you're not trying to injure the animal, you're just trying to frighten it off. So very small pebbles that you could keep a bucket next to the door that you could throw a handful at. Spray it with a hose or the water gun. Get creative. The more varied and creative you can be in your hazing techniques, the more effective it's going to be. And harass every coyote you encounter both in your yard, on the street, in your neighborhood. And everyone should do it. If you do it, if your next door neighbor does it, if someone down the road does it, someone and many people in the neighborhood next door do it, it's going to be more effective. If you've already removed the food sources around your neighborhood in your community and people are starting to haze coyotes as often as they're seen, all of a sudden your neighborhood is not nearly as attractive a place to be as it used to be for coyotes. And here I mentioned most of these, but these are some different tools you can use to haze coyotes. You'll see the cellphone with the no cellphone slash through it. Often we'll get pictures or videos sent to us from someone encountering a coyote in their yard. It's a great picture but it's a missed opportunity to haze the coyote. While you're standing there passively taking a video or a photo next to it, that coyote is realizing that person's not a threat. So put your cell phone away and haze that animal away.
What should kids do? Kids should know the difference between a coyote and a dog if you have the ability to convey that to them. But parents in reality should teach their kids not to approach any animal they don't know. Kids are far far far more likely, thousands of times more likely, to be bitten by a domestic dog than a coyote. So they should be taught to always avoid these animals if they don't know the animal directly. Make themselves look bigger, open up their coat, wave their arms over their heads so they look like a larger animal. Slowly back away, don't run. Running away from an animal like a coyote could cause it to instinctively chase. It's not because it means any harm to the child necessarily, but their prey runs away. You know the animals that they naturally hunt run away so they instinctively will start running after something that runs away so it's important to never run away from a coyote. And then find an adult to harass the coyote. If the child is not capable of these steps or understanding these steps, it's important that adults supervise them whenever they're outside.
And obviously, as we've said many times, it's very important to protect your pets. As I said, outdoor cats and small dogs are viewed as a food source. It doesn't matter if they have a sweater on or a collar on, the coyote does not distinguish that animal from another prey item that they might encounter. And the same goes for medium and large dogs. They're viewed as competition, as a threat, as another coyote that's intruding onto their territory and they're also attacked. For these dogs, the aggression tends to happen more during the mating season, January to March, and also when they're walking in the vicinity of a coyote den. So, what do you need to do? Pets should be directly supervised when outdoors and again, as I said before, directly supervising means you standing next to your pet with it on a leash. Standing across the yard, at the deck, at the back door is not supervising your pets and, unfortunately, it will not prevent a coyote from going after your dog or cat. The dog should be leashed when they're on walks, including on trails. And they should be up to date on their vaccines.
You can also try to keep coyotes out of your yard. You can use fencing. It's recommended the fencing be at least 6 foot high, that would be buried in the ground, or that there be an apron staked out as you see in the lower photo. This is to prevent a coyote from digging under it. And you can also install a roll bar on top. This is essentially a bar or a tube, excuse me, around a piece of wire or another tube, and if a coyote tries to get purchase on it, it's spun off of it. It's important to remember though that if you have a 6 foot fence with a 3 foot snow bank next to it, or something else a coyote can jump on, in reality you only have a 3 foot fence. It's also important to make sure there are no gaps in the fence. Coyotes can fit through a relatively small gap. If their skull can fit through, they can fit through.
It's important to block off crawl spaces under porches, decks, sheds. Again, this is a place the coyotes can den and find shelter in your yard. Cut back those brushy areas, remove brush piles, log piles, and rock piles. If you do identify a den, try to disturb it. Just digging in the area, human scent in the area, ammonia-soaked rags that you toss under the shed like this, or playing a radio next to it can be enough of a disturbance that coyotes will move to den elsewhere.
We often get comments that people are afraid to go on a walk. You know, even despite all this, I just I'm afraid to go out and walk my dog or walk in the woods. It's important to remember that thousands, if not millions of people are recreating every single day in Massachusetts. They're out jogging, walking their dogs, and running without incident. But if you're not comfortable doing so, carry a walking stick. That gives you something that you can haze a coyote with. You can bang it on trees. You can bang it on the pavement. You can make yourself look bigger by waving it back and forth as a hazing tool. A rapidly unfurled umbrella as you're yelling and screaming at the same time can be something that's startling to a coyote. Similarly, if you have a trash bag, rapidly unfurling it and filling it with air while you're yelling and screaming can be something that makes you look much bigger and can be startling. You can also use repellents, whether it's pepper spray or a citronella spray, to try to scare off or deter a coyote that's in close proximity to you. It's important that if you use bear spray, a type of pepper spray, to know that, as you see in the bottom right, it puts out a cloud of pepper spray, out to about 20 feet or so. But if you're in a highly urban area, if it's a windy day, there's a good potential that you can spray yourself, spray a neighbor, or spray a friend so use caution if you're using that product.
As I said before, there are also those behaviors by coyotes that we consider to be a public safety threat. And these are animals that we would recommend being removed from the area. People often ask us in these circumstances to relocate a coyote and it's really not an option to do. One, it's practically impossible. Trapping, again, we've talked about trapping, the limitations on trapping coyotes. If I set a trap in an area, I have to bait it heavily and now I've attracted every coyote under the sun to that area. In the event to try to remove or in an attempt to try to remove a single animal. Well why don't you come out and dart a coyote? I could come out to your community a dozen times and never encounter a coyote, let alone get to the 10 to 15 yards away from it I need to be to successfully dart it. So, it's not practically possible to do this, to capture coyote in these circumstances. It's also not fair to relocate that problem to another community. You’re presumably want this coyote gone because it's causing a conflict for you. If I move it to another community, it's going to cause that same conflict somewhere else and that's not something that we're going to do. It also has the potential to spread disease, like mange, and it's inhumane to the coyote. Remember, these are highly territorial animals. If I take a coyote and I move it somewhere else in the state, I am dropping it in another coyote territory. It is going to be attacked and it is going to be persecuted by those coyotes in every coyote territory around and so we obviously wouldn't want to do that to the animal. So, relocation just really isn't an option.
And so this goes to lethal then removal of these coyotes that pose a public safety threat, again, if these animals are a confirmed threat to public safety - Who can remove them? Local or state law enforcement officers, Animal Control Officers, if they're deputized, can, Environmental Police Officers, these are all again law enforcement officers at this point. There are also Problem Animal Control agents that are certified to deal with coyotes. Or licensed hunters and trappers during the regulated hunting and trapping seasons for those animals. It's important to remember that all firearm discharge restrictions apply to Problem Animal Control agents and license hunters and trappers. And all trapping regulations and laws apply to all these people. And because of those limitations, as we said before, almost no animals, even in these circumstances, are removed from urban and suburban situations. Again, this is why we stress the need to coexist with coyotes because they are going to be in Massachusetts and they are going to be just as present in your community as they have been in the past. But if we practice these basics, if we remove the food sources from around our homes and communities, we're reducing the attractant to our yards, and we're reducing the number of animals we're supporting in any area, if we're regularly harassing coyotes, if we're supervising our pets, and we're not intentionally feeding wildlife, we're preventing 99 percent of the conflict that we experience with coyotes in Massachusetts and we're preventing those more aggressive behaviors from developing in coyotes.
If you ever think that you are in direct threat from a coyote, an imminent public safety threat, call 9-1-1. Your local police can be there in minutes. But if you need any assistance for any other issues with coyotes, you can contact us, MassWildlife, at our Field Headquarters or at your closest district office. You can also go to mass.gov/MassWildlife and find more information on coyotes. Or you can contact the Environmental Police 24/7 at their dispatch number. Hopefully this helped you learn a little bit more about coyote biology, ecology, the role that plays in determining their behavior, and their presence in your community, and what you can do to coexist and prevent conflict with coyotes. Thank you.