We at once seek connection with the mystery and freedom of the natural world, yet we continually strive to tame the wild around us and compulsively control the wild within our own nature – Amy Stein

Urban Sprawl; the expansion of society and recession of flora and fauna.  Or to be more precise,  the substitution of natural flora with basic landscaping. The wildlife displaced must find a new home, a task easier for small forms like birds or squirrels, more difficult for larger creatures like the deer or bears. While all species of wildlife have been known to have contact with people at one time or another in urban settings, it’s the North American Coyote that has got the most attention due to their ability to survive, and some would argue, thrive in urban settings. Additionally, their population makes them an easy subject of study; in Chicago there is an estimated urban population of 2,000.

While some believe that eliminating the coyote or other animal is the solution to defining the boundaries of city and country, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry:

Chicago’s initial response to the animal’s arrival was simply to get rid of them through widespread deportation and killing. But that strategy turned out to be ineffective, Stanley Gehrt notes. Coyotes in urban settings have a far greater rate of survival than their rural counterparts: Between 60 and 70 percent of adults and pups survive each year in the city, whereas in the country—in the face of rampant hunting and trapping—they may have only a 15 to 30 percent chance of survival.

Do not infer from this however, that coyotes and humans enjoy anything close to a peaceful coexistence. Urban coyotes avoid human contact and tend to dwell in more forested and under-populated areas; New York’s Central Park is home to at least one coyote; and Toronto, with more than 30 square miles of parkland, is home to more than a few coyotes. As with any wild animal, close contact should be avoided if possible, more often than not reports of coyote encounters involve injury. In Scarborough, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto, a coyote has been terrorizing one neighborhood known as The Beaches. Smaller pets have been carried off from backyards,  an 80-pound Labrador Retriever was attacked. People as well aren’t immune to attacks, a woman by the name of Taylor Mitchell was fatally wounded hiking in Nova Scotia. Given the shy nature of coyote, it can only be speculated that such contact is a result of a limited food supply or viewing the victim as a threat. In a recent study published in Human Dimensions of Wildlife:

A correlation is emerging: the more a coyote’s diet consists of human-derived food, the greater the likelihood that they will cause trouble. Research published in 2007 found that less than 2 percent of coyote scat analyzed from the Chicago metropolitan area, where no incidents of coyote attacks have been reported to date, contained food of anthropogenic origin. On the other hand, it constituted as much as 25 percent of coyote diets in densely population areas of southern California, home to the highest concentration of coyote attack incidents in the U.S.

As enlightening as these studies are, they don’t address the fundamental issue of how best to deal with coyotes and other wildlife. Ignoring and not encouraging human dependence will not make them go away, not that they necessarily should.  Societys’ habit of pushing out and marginalizing cultures or wildlife has never worked out well in the long term. Ceasing the habit of urban sprawl and making do with the space we currently have is a far-flung fantasy. Walling ourselves in is an even larger leap of fiction and something animals wouldn’t recognize. There is no clear  solution, though recognizing our own actions and consequences is a good start.

Further Reading:

• Amy Stein, Domesticated
• Toronto Star
• Scientific American
• AM New York
• CBC
• Living With Urban Wildlife