Coexisting With Coyotes

The growing population of coyotes in North Carolina is surprising because they are not originally native to the state. Coyotes have expanded their range from the Midwest to the entire North American continent due to the lack of larger predators. Coyotes have filled the ecological niche left by the extinction of mountain lions and red wolves, but they are not capable of managing populations of larger herbivores like white-tailed deer. Coyotes primarily prey on small animals like rats, mice, and rabbits. The coyote population in North Carolina has leveled off, and they have a self-regulating population. Most issues with coyotes can be prevented, such as keeping outdoor cats inside to avoid conflicts with coyotes. Overall, coyotes are here to stay in North Carolina, and it is important to learn how to coexist with them safely. As a North Carolina native, I have a vested interest in the ecosystems and native wildlife that call the state home. I was surprised to learn that the growing population of coyotes we are now seeing in the state is actually a species that is not originally native to North Carolina. In the 1900s, coyotes began expanding their territory from the Midwestern states of the U.S. east as they no longer had larger predators to contend with and that would drive them away. It appears these wild canines are here to stay and my hope is through my recent conversation with Fallon Owens, an extension wildlife biologist with the North Carolina Wildlife Commission, we can learn to coexist with our neighbors safely. I just want to thank you, Fallon, this morning for taking the time to speak with me. If you wouldn't mind just kind of introducing yourself, talking about your role and where you work and maybe why you got into that. Sure. My name is Fallon Owens and I am the extension wildlife biologist with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. Most of what I do involves how people and wildlife interact with one another in unexpected ways. For example, hunting or fishing or birdwatching are ways that people interact with wildlife but they kind of sign up for it. We call human-wildlife interactions those encounters where people didn't sign up for. For example, experiencing a raccoon getting into your attic or finding a bat on the sidewalk that you think might be sick or any number of other surprise encounters, that's kind of my realm. I work statewide on a lot of outreach and education and helping people prevent problems and know what to do when they have those encounters. Awesome. Thank you. I am a fellow North Carolinian. I was born and raised there. Something that I've noticed over the last couple of years is that our coyote population has started to increase or is increasing. I was surprised to learn that they're not originally native to North Carolina. Can you speak to that a little bit? Yeah. Coyotes are native to the United States but historically they were only found in the western and midwestern part of the country. Over the last 100, 200 years, coyotes have expanded their range from where they were originally to basically the entire North American continent and Central America. They're about to extend their range all the way into South America. Coyotes are doing extremely well. That range expansion has happened in a lot of ways by virtue of ways that human beings have changed the landscape to make them more advantageous for coyotes. Interesting. Here we are again changing things, right humans? When I was looking into this, I had realized that we used or saw that we used to have mountain lions and that seems to not be the case in North Carolina. I know there's a small population down in Florida but otherwise on the east coast they're I guess non-existent. Is that part of why the coyotes have been able to move in? That's part of it, absolutely. Human beings have done a very good job of removing the large, what we call apex predators, the biggest predators of the landscape. We used to have what was called the eastern cougar in the eastern United States and they were extirpated or basically hunted or killed to extinction. Also the red wolves, which used to be very ubiquitous, the main predator in the southeastern United States, were eradicated. Now we have a very, very, very tiny population in eastern North Carolina that's considered to be a non-essential experimental population because there's so few of them and it really is up in the air whether or not they'll be able to survive in a landscape that's mostly dominated by humans. Basically coyotes have taken advantage of that void, this vacuum effect with a lack of these larger predators that were able to out-compete coyotes. They just kind of slipped into the emptiness and took the place of those apex predators and now coyotes in a large part of the eastern United States are the biggest predator. They're filling, I would assume, a niche that the mountain lions and the red wolves would have originally filled, right? What is their ecological advantage or what is their role in the habitat they're now in? Yeah, so they are definitely good at keeping a lot of small animals and what we call meso-carnivore populations in check. Most of the time coyotes in North Carolina are going to be eating things like rats, mice, moles, bulls, rabbits. That's primarily the majority of what they prey on. In the springtime when fawns all over the state are being born, they kind of all get born at once and that's a strategy to basically protect them because predators can only eat but so much in a short period of time. Newborn fawns definitely get predated on by coyotes, but the coyotes that we have in North Carolina are not very good at dealing with adult deer. We don't really see coyotes taking down and killing and preying on adult deer unless those deer were already sick or injured or dead. Coyotes are very happy to eat roadkill deer or the leftovers from a hunter that has field dressed their deer and left in the organs. We don't have coyotes that are actually taking down and killing healthy adult deer. We're filling that empty niche that our historic predators filled, but only up to a point. They're not designed to kill or to manage populations of those larger herbivores like our white-tailed deer. We still kind of rely on humans to keep our deer population in check. Right. Yeah. That very large deer population that seems to continue to grow and grow itself. Is it safe to assume the coyote population is continuing to increase or have you seen kind of it leveling off at this point? Yeah. We definitely watched closely as coyotes moved into North Carolina from the western part of the state because, of course, as the range expanded from the midwestern U.S. eastward, we kind of saw this flood of coyotes appearing in western counties and then sort of the central counties. Then at the very end, we saw them appearing all the way in the eastern counties, including the barrier islands and Nags Head and parts of the state like that were the very, very last parts of North Carolina for coyotes to appear. That was several decades ago. They kind of started moving into North Carolina back in the 80s and by the mid-2000s, that's really when they had a rise in all of the counties. Fast forward to now, we are seeing kind of a leveling off. They do have a self-regulating population and I think we're pretty much there where coyotes can only reproduce up to a point. They will actually start reproducing less, having fewer pups and less pup survival when they kind of meet at that equilibrium point where there's enough coyotes. We're kind of there now and we're seeing the hunting trends. People hunt coyotes. They track coyotes. We're seeing the amount of coyotes that are removed from those practices kind of level off. We're there. That's so interesting how wildlife just kind of ... I mean, I think we all have an idea that it kind of regulates itself, but for them to do that is pretty awesome. With coyotes, it sounds like they're here to stay in North Carolina, that getting them out now or moving them out and evicting them is probably not going to happen. With that, I hear on the news and on forums online and all that, that there is the potential to interact with a coyote, to see a coyote, maybe see it on your ring doorbell, that kind of thing. What I'm hoping is to, as humans continue to expand and realize that coyotes are here to stay, my hope is to just kind of allow people to access information on how they can stay safe from coyotes. I think that we hear and have this idea of them as being cunning and bad and this and that. They lure dogs off and all of that. My hope is that you can kind of give us an idea of, with them here to stay, they're now residents of North Carolina as well, how can we stay safe? How can our pets and kids stay safe? What's the best protocol on all that? We do keep track of the reports of coyote interactions that people have in North Carolina. The good news is that most of the issues that people worry about with coyotes, they don't really happen. Those really scary scenarios that people think of where a coyote is attacking a person, we don't really see that. It happens on extremely rare occasions. Usually there's something going on that created an opportunity for that thing to happen. What we do see is when people are having bad interactions with coyotes, mostly they are very, very preventable. They're not the kinds of things that people tend to think about or worry about with coyotes. The biggest thing that we see is coyotes that are taking advantage of, say, outdoor cats. That's probably the most common issue that people report to us. From an ecological standpoint and a wildlife conservation standpoint, outdoor cats are extremely bad for our wildlife and our native ecosystems. Responsible pet owners should always be keeping their cats inside. For a lot of different reasons. One of which is that cats are going to be killing our native songbirds, our small reptiles and amphibians. They're a non-natural predator, so they're very destructive. Also, when you let them outside, they're being exposed to diseases, they have the potential of getting into fights with other wild animals or other outdoor cats, they can get run over by cars. Then you have the fact that when you put a cat outside, it becomes part of the food web. Not only does it become a predator of smaller animals, but it has the potential of becoming prey to larger animals. People who let their cats outside are basically signing up their cats to all of these hazards. That's something that's very, very preventable, just by keeping cats inside. Excellent. Thank you. I think most people think of, again, the coyote interaction with the dogs, but I think fewer people think about what effect they'll have on outdoor cats, so, yes, thank you. With that, what is, again, there's that idea that coyotes are luring dogs off and all of that. When we spoke last week, briefly, you had mentioned that that's a bit of a lore, folklore. Is that what you're finding? Yes. Coyotes are definitely smart animals. They're very good at surviving. I would say, knowing how they behave, that they are wily, they're opportunists, but they're not cunning in the way that some people think they are. There is this myth where a coyote will lure a dog, almost like Jurassic Park style, lure it into a sense of safety. Then, when the dog comes and runs after the coyote, these other coyotes are lying in wait. Coyotes are not really pack hunters in that sense. Most of the time, they hunt alone. Oh, interesting. Okay. There's proletary hunters, and the male and the female are going to be off in different parts of the territory, looking for mice and rabbits and things. Maybe after they're successful with hunting something, they'll bring it to their mate or their pups and they'll share, but they're not actively hunting together. They are not wolves. What does happen, and this keys into the fact that coyotes have certain behaviors as wild animals, dogs, which are also canids, so they're cousins in a way, they have similar behaviors, but very distinct. Dogs have different sets of rules, they have different etiquette, they have different ideas of what is proper behavior. Usually, when you have a dog that's running towards a coyote, it's a misunderstanding in terms of what the coyote is looking for and what the dog's looking for. Coyotes are territorial. They do not tolerate other canids that are roughly their same size in their territory. Coyotes maintain their property boundaries, essentially, their territorial boundaries, by asserting, this is the edge of my territory, you are not allowed in. That's how they maintain those territories, by communicating with one another. Sometimes there's skirmishes, but usually it's not attacks. They can't go to the doctor, so they really want to avoid injury, whereas dogs, they don't have those kinds of instincts and perceptions of risk. A dog, one, might think it's perfectly okay to chase after a coyote and try to kill it, if it's a breed that has those types of instincts, or maybe the dog just wants to play and has no idea that going up to a wild animal is a very bad idea. When you have a dog that's roughly the size of a coyote, that is running up to a coyote, that's not going to end well. The coyote is not going to tolerate that. Usually it's the dog that initiates that, where the dog wants to play, or wants to chase, or have a fight, or something like that. The coyotes really don't sign up for those types of encounters. With small dogs, we do see, if you have a really tiny breed dog, like a toy breed, those dogs can look a whole lot like a rabbit, or a natural prey item for a coyote. When they run up to a coyote, either to play, or to chase it away, that's definitely going to be a situation that a pet owner is going to want to avoid, because a coyote is a survivor, and they're looking for their next meal, and if some tiny animal runs right up to them and puts themselves at risk, a coyote probably is going to take advantage of that if they're hungry. I wouldn't have turned down a pizza if it was just dropped off at my door. Yeah, thank you, I think that that's a huge thing I've heard many a time, living in North Carolina, of watch your dogs, they're going to be lured off, and it just sounds like keep your dog on a leash, and they're going to be okay, in most instances, so that's very helpful information. Are there any other things, obviously coyotes, as predators, are going to take down, potentially, cats, a dog, if it runs up to it, that kind of thing, but are there other things, as we see them sometimes in neighborhoods and backyards, that humans, that we can do to prevent that, or is that just something we've got to learn to live with? Generally, if you have any small animals that might be at risk, or be mistaken for a prey item, you want to keep that animal either in some sort of predator-proof enclosure, six-foot fences are considered to be dog-proof, if it's six feet tall, and there's no way for a dog to dig underneath it, that's going to be the type of fence that you can keep a dog behind, and your dog's not going to get out, and a coyote's not going to be able to get in, or just supervising, being there, human beings are big animals, and coyotes don't want to come up to us, they don't want to interact with us, they're afraid of us, so if you have a tiny dog, having it on a six-foot leash so that you're right there is an excellent way to protect it. Same thing with outdoor chickens, backyard chickens, it's really popular, a lot of people getting into keeping backyard chickens. Chickens are prey, every wild animal that eats meat loves to eat chickens, not just coyotes, but foxes, and owls, and hawks, and skunks, and opossums, and raccoons, everything loves to eat chickens, so just as a general, broad piece of advice, if you have backyard chickens, you need to keep them in a predator-proof coop, and a run that keeps predators away from them. I guess the other thing would be rabbits, if you keep pet rabbits, keep them in a predator-proof enclosure. It all seems doable, I think sometimes what I've seen, and I've run into myself of, is if it's hard for me to do, I'm going to be less likely to do it, but I think that those are all pretty simple ways to keep your animal safe, and to potentially prevent that coyote interaction, which is fantastic. Is there any, oh, sorry, should somebody see a coyote out and about on their cameras, or anything like that, is that an instance that they should report, or is it like seeing a rabbit, and you let it go about its day, and kind of move on? Yeah, coyotes are ubiquitous. We get reports of coyotes everywhere, everywhere in North Carolina, and that includes downtown Charlotte, downtown Raleigh, downtown Winston-Salem, there is no part of our state where coyotes are not expected to be, and that includes all the neighborhoods. In really developed areas, usually coyotes are just passing through. They're going from one green space with trees and vegetation and prey, to the next door green space, and they're just using those really urbanized areas as travel corridors. I did want to mention, one way to make sure that that's why a coyote is passing through your neighborhood, is to remove any food items that might attract coyotes, and get them to incorporate your home into its territory. If there's food, that's where a coyote is going to want to be, and pass through more regularly. You don't want to put pet food out. Bird feeders can attract the rodents that attract coyotes. There's far better ways to feed the birds than putting up bird feeders. Bird feeders actually cause a lot of wildlife conflicts. That's a whole different story that I can go into if you want. If you have fruit trees, you want to make sure that you clean up the fruit that falls on the ground. Secure your garbage, really anything that could be a food item that would be attractive to either rodents and rabbits that attract coyotes, or unnatural food items. I don't know. Don't leave your trash out, or your food waste out, so that animals can get to it. If you do that, and a neighborhood doesn't really have very much to offer for a coyote, they're going to be there still, but they're just going to be passing through. If you see one, and you are concerned about it, you are very welcome to contact the Wildlife Resources Commission, and ask questions about what you could do to make sure that you don't have any bad encounters. Because we know that they're absolutely ubiquitous, they're everywhere in North Carolina, we're not going to respond by saying, oh, we're going to come and do something about it. We know that there are coyotes are there, and our job is to educate people to make sure that they understand coyotes are around, and we're very happy to answer questions. That's pretty much why you would call, is to, if you have concerns, get answers to your questions, and we can help you through that. Great. And that information is on your website? Yes. Yeah, we have a lot of information on our website as well, so you don't even have to call us if you don't want to, but we have a wildlife helpline that you can call if you need to talk to a person about your questions. Excellent. And when I post this, I'll make sure that that can be accessed for people, so thank you. Excellent. I don't want to take any more of your time, the last question I just have, is there any final information that you want to provide in terms of coyotes, coexisting with coyotes? I think that we want to obviously change the verbiage from conflict with, to coexisting with coyotes, they're here to stay. Anything that I missed, anything that you want to add, just as we finish up? Yeah, I think one other thing involves what you can do if you see a coyote in person. I think a lot of times, people's gut inclination, their first response is to either run away, or hide, or otherwise, they're afraid of the coyote, and they think that the coyote is going to be aggressive in some way. And really, honestly, especially if you see a coyote in your neighborhood or in your backyard, the best thing you can do is to basically be aggressive toward that coyote to establish that where you're seeing it is not a place where a coyote should be hanging out. So coyotes are afraid of people, people are big, we are scary, we are going to win any fight with a coyote, and they understand that. They also understand territories. If you see a coyote passing through your backyard, and you don't want coyotes hanging around your backyard, if you see one, yell at it, throw something at it, almost fake chase after it, raise your arms, be loud, be scary, be authoritative, and establish that you are the dominant animal in that location. You'll get that message pretty well, especially if you're consistent about it, and there's no food that's attracting them. So don't be afraid to be scary at a coyote if you think it's somewhere where it shouldn't be. That is always excellent behavior. That is not something I would have necessarily thought of, but it makes sense. Speak their language. They understand territory, and you're going to tell them that that's your territory and not theirs. So that's awesome. Thank you so much. Well, I want to thank you for your time today. I appreciate this information, and I'm excited for people to hopefully start coexisting with these coyotes and understanding they're here to stay, and there's definitely, you've given us fantastic ways to make sure that we stay safe with them. So thank you so, so very much. Well, thank you for asking questions and helping people better understand what's now just our very common resident coyotes. Yes, thank you. I want to extend my gratitude once again to Fallon for taking the time to speak with me today and providing us with all the important information on how we can stay safe and learn to live with coyotes. I think this topic provides us with an excellent learning opportunity to see just how far-reaching human impacts can be and the consequences that come with it. I encourage everyone to take the steps to coexist with native wildlife as it is beneficial to all living creatures now and in the future. Thank you again for tuning in and to our fantastic guests. I hope you will also check out our other episode of Coexisting with Urban Predators, where we discuss how to coexist with cougars, especially in California. There will also be a couple resources, including an infographic and fact sheets on how to live with coyotes in our neighborhoods, as well as basic coyote information. Thank you again. Have a great day.