Once coyotes get a taste for city living, the call of the wild fades to a whisper.
Once coyotes get a taste for city living, the call of the wild fades to a whisper. Food is abundant and predators are few. Research indicates that coyotes enjoy the benefits of urban areas enough to put up with all the people, and Seattle is no exception.
Over the past century, coyotes have colonized every major metropolitan area in North America. Chicago is home to an estimated 4,000 coyotes, and in Los Angeles, urban coyote density is at least seven times higher than in wild areas. Coyotes are often spotted in parks and neighborhoods throughout Seattle, but the lack of formal data makes it difficult for researchers to track trends.
“We observed a ninefold increase in coyote density in Seattle compared to more natural and wild areas of the state,” said lead author Laura Prugh, a UW professor of environmental and forest sciences. “That might surprise people who think of coyotes as afraid of humans, but I think it just shows how ideal the urban setting is for coyotes.”
The results were published Sept. 10 in Environmental Research: Ecology.
Read More: University of Washington
Image: This coyote was photographed by a game camera in the Union Bay Natural Area in Seattle, Wash., near the University of Washington campus in 2017 during a course on wildlife techniques taught by Laura Prugh, a UW professor of environmental and forest sciences. (Credit: University of Washington)
