Should It Stay Or Should It Go?

My photos and videos of the Central Park Coyote have generated lots of email.  They have mostly been about what to do with the Coyote. The emails I’ve gotten have basically fallen into three categories, Shoot It, Move It or Leave It.

An interesting article in Scientific American (just for full disclosure, a division of the company I work for) details recent studies of Coyote populations in suburban and urban areas.  It turns out they aren’t so bad, if you don’t feed them or leave your pets outdoors.

A very nice PDF has been created by the Cook County Coyote Project.  It explains the results of an extensive study of the Chicago area population of Coyotes by Dr. Stanley Gehrt of The Ohio State University.

As wild mammals and raptors reclaim our urban areas, they bring with them new urban wildlife management issues.  It’s fascinating to see how unprepared our local governments are for these arrivals.

I went looking for the Coyote tonight and missed seeing it.  However, others did see it.  There are two ends of the Hallett Sanctuary fence.  One end is near Gapstow bridge.  The other end is near Sixth Avenue and the Coyote can exit by walking over a small dam without getting wet.  I had staked out the wrong end of the fence tonight!

Update: Robert Sullivan (author of Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants) wrote a nice piece for the Intelligencer column of the March 8th issue of New York Magazine about this evening. 

Don’t Feed The Coyote!