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Putting coyotes, and residents, on alert

East Vancouver resident wants to spread the word about what East Vancouver coyotes are up to
coyote alerts
Judith Webster and roommate Imre Toth with rescue cat Frostanie. Webster, with help from Toth, started a coyote text message alert group last year. Photo Dan Toulgoet

An East Vancouver woman is hoping to recruit more people to help spread the word about coyote activity in the city.

Judith Webster started a coyote text message alert group last year. Members let the group’s moderator know if they see a coyote and then a text message goes out to alert the rest of the group.

“Any sighting texted in to the moderator's number by anyone in the group is then texted out to everyone ASAP with the goal of receiving information in real time so that people might be able to take appropriate action in time to avert a tragedy,” Webster said. “We like the text to include time, location, number of coyotes, direction headed, and any other relevant information about the sighting.”

She said the aim of the group is to educate people about the animals’ activities and movements in the area.

“The group itself has just been really educational to a lot of people… they had no idea how active coyotes were,” she said. “Some of them have actually changed their pet management strategy. One person, she said she had always just thought of coyotes has a theoretical threat, that’s how she described it, and now she brings her cats in at dusk.”

Webster first came up with the idea after one of her own cats was attacked by a coyote back in 2005. She said she’d been thinking about it for several years and got the idea of sending out group texts from a book she was reading. She said she was spurred into action last year after hearing two stories of coyotes attacking cats in a week.

“I just thought enough is enough,” she said, and started putting up posters and recruiting others to join the group.

“The group is around 90 now but I’m trying to double that,” she said.

“We’re just a bunch of people that are trying to somehow level the playing field and get sightings out before an accident happens, for people to get their cats in or get their dog on a leash if it’s in an off-leash park nearby.”

The core area covered by the group is between 12th Avenue and Hastings Street, and Clark Drive and Renfew Street.

“It’s really hard to know how many coyote packs there are and how much they overlap, so I kind of warn people if they’re joining from outside that core [area] that we could completely miss their coyote packs,” Webster said.

 

Coyotes in the city

Greg Hart, urban wildlife program co-ordinator with the Stanley Park Ecological Society, said no one has ever done an exact count of the number of coyotes in the city.

“Based on habitat uses and home range sizes and pack sizes in other cities, it’s been fairly consistent across North America, we assume there’s around 200 coyotes in Vancouver itself and probably 2,000 to 3,000 in the whole Lower Mainland,” he told the Courier.

Originally native to the prairie grasslands of the southwest United States, coyotes have thrived in more urban environments.

“As people have settled right across the continent, we’ve removed their biggest predator, which is the wolf, and we’ve established these cities, which if you look at a city with homes in it that’s basically a field,” Hart said. “Our lawns are grasslands and we do a great job of generating rodents and food for them.”

Small rodents such as mice, rats and squirrels make up a large part of the coyotes’ diet, so they are naturally attracted to areas that attract rodents — open garbage and compost bins, and bird feeders.

“They’ve done scat analyses in different cities to try and figure out what exactly these animals are eating and they find that 40 to 60 per cent of their diet is small rodents,” Hart said.

Coyotes first moved into the Lower Mainland in the 1930s but weren’t spotted in Vancouver proper until the 1980s, Hart said, and in 2001, the ecological society launched its Co-Existing with Coyotes program.

“Coyotes were kind of this new creature and there wasn’t a lot of information available to the public out there and people didn’t know what to do with them,” Hart said. “There was a couple incidents where coyotes were aggressive and made the news and this program was started as a way to monitor coyotes… and provide consistent education and tools and resources for the public.”

The program’s website includes a map of recent coyote sightings.

“Many of our sightings are just people seeing a coyote trotting down the street at night and that’s still a sighting but it’s certainly not a reason for concern,” Hart said. “We try to get an idea of how habituated the animals are and depending on that our response varies.

“Ones that are seen just going about their business, eating a rat or a squirrel in the park, that’s great. We tell people not to feed it and to scare it away.”

However, the group will take action if a coyote starts showing up in the same area regularly during the day.

“That’s showing an animal that’s way more comfortable in that area, it’s starting to get habituated and so we’ll do outreach in that area,” Hart said.

If it’s a park, staff and volunteers will set up a table to educate park users and if it’s a more residential neighbourhood they will go door-to-door talking to residents about what they can do.

“If we work together as a community we can really change this coyote’s behaviour and make it go back to being a more wild animal,” he said, adding that coyotes are naturally timid and afraid of humans.

Tips include removing potential food sources, including ensuring garbage gets into the garbage, and never deliberately feeding one.

“Almost all instances of animals losing fear and actually becoming aggressive towards people are traced back to people who were feeding them,” Hart said. “That food is such a powerful motivator.”

If a coyote starts showing up during the day, scare it away by making loud noises, yelling and holding your arms out wide to appear larger. For those coyotes that are a bit more habituated, Hart recommends making a rattle by filling a can with coins and rocks and shaking it to scare the animal away.

“That makes a really loud noise. They have sensitive hearing and that’s a really intimidating gesture for them,” he said. “It’s something I carry with me every time I do site visit and I find it to be a really helpful, useful tool.”

As for pets, Hart recommends keeping cats indoors as much as possible, especially at night and in the early morning, and keeping small dogs on leash.

In cases where a coyote is acting aggressively towards humans, B.C. conservation officers are called in to deal with the animal.

There have been a couple of high profile incidents in recent weeks involving coyotes in the Lower Mainland.

Last month conservation officers killed two coyotes in Burnaby after a three-year-old boy was mauled just outside his home near Burnaby Mountain Golf Course May 15. In that case, the officers said the animals had become “thoroughly habituated.”

That same week a North Shore woman fought off a coyote to save a small dog on Powerline Trail near the Grouse Grind.

For more information about, or to sign up for, the coyote text message alerts email vanyotes@yahoo.com.

@JessicaEKerr

jkerr@vancourier.com