A ten-year community reporting database reveals rising coyote boldness and associated human concern in Edmonton, Canada

Abstract

In cities throughout North America, sightings of coyotes (Canis latrans) have become common. Reports of humancoyote conflict are also rising, as is the public demand for proactive management to prevent negative human-coyote interactions. Effective and proactive management can be informed by the direct observations of community members, who can report their interactions with coyotes and describe the location, time, and context that led to their interactions. To better understand the circumstances that can predict human-coyote conflict, we used a web-based reporting system to collect 9134 community-supplied reports of coyotes in Edmonton, Canada, between January 2012 and December 2021. We used a standardized ordinal ranking system to score each report on two indicators of human-coyote conflict: coyote boldness, based on the reported coyote behavior, and human concern about coyotes, determined from the emotions or perceptions about coyotes expressed by reporters. We assigned greater scores to behaviors where coyotes followed, approached, charged, or contacted pets or people, and to perceptions where reporters expressed fear, worry, concern, discomfort or alarm. Using ordered logistic regression and chi-square tests, we compared boldness and concern scores to spatial, temporal, and contextual predictors. Our analysis showed that coyotes were bolder in less developed open areas and during the pup-rearing season, but human concern was higher in residential areas and during the dispersal season. Reports that mentioned dogs or cats were more likely to describe bolder coyote behavior, and those that mentioned pets or children had more negative perceptions about coyotes. Coyote boldness and human concern both indicated rising human-coyote conflict in Edmonton over the 10 years of reporting.

Proactive use of intensive aversive conditioning increases probability of retreat by coyotes

“…Independent of attractants, coyote boldness varies with season and appears to be increasing over time. As a seasonal pattern, we found that coyote boldness increased during the pup‐rearing season when coyotes are defending vulnerable young, which is consistent with several other studies (Baker & Timm, 2016; Farr et al, 2023; Lukasik & Alexander, 2011; Quinn et al, 2016; Timm, 2006). We also found that both the probability of conflict reports and the number of reports increased between years, again similar to the findings of others (Drake et al, 2020; Farr et al, 2023).…”

“…Reports of bold urban coyotes are increasing throughout North America (Drake et al, 2020; Farr et al, 2023) and might be addressed with the behavioral management tools of hazing and aversive conditioning. To date, there is no standardization of these techniques for coyotes and few studies of their efficacy.…”

“…More recently, unusual spikes in the frequency of coyote attacks on people have been reported in several cities, including Chicago (Illinois; Andrew & Alonso, 2020), Calgary (Alberta; Kaufmann, 2021), the San Francisco Bay Area (California; Diaz, 2021), Vancouver (British Columbia; Griffin, 2022), and Burlington (Ontario; The Canadian Press, 2022). Although such incidents remain rare, urban residents have long expressed concerns about the presence of coyotes in their neighborhoods (Siemer et al, 2014;Webber, 1997;White & Gehrt, 2009) and that concern is increasing (Drake et al, 2020;Farr et al, 2023).…”