ShareThisScientist Numi Mitchell and her team trapped a 25-pound, light brown coyote recently in Middletown, R.I. -- not to cause it any harm, but rather to find a way to save its life.
Mitchell believes the coyote is part of a pack that has been all too visible in town, lounging on lawns and staring down people instead of running away, as most coyotes do. It is likely part of the pack that recently killed Linda Dutra's 10-year-old Yorkshire terrier, Harry.
That means one thing to Mitchell: somebody has been habituating the coyotes -- taking away their natural fear of humans -- by feeding them.
Mitchell's experience has taught her that feeding coyotes amounts to killing them, because it makes them lazy and bold, and a threat to pets and possibly people. She hopes to persuade people to change their behaviors.
As coyotes have become common throughout, they are prompting hundreds of complaints each year from people who worry when they see them as well as from those who have had pet cats and dogs killed in their own backyards.
For five years Mitchell and her team at The Conservation Agency in Jamestown, R.I., have been trapping and tracking coyotes on Aquidneck Island and in Jamestown to better understand coyote behavior. She puts radio collars on the coyotes she catches, and then tracks them.
Using the tracking data and other observations, Mitchell has identified a pair she calls Bonnie and Clyde that raised a litter. Mitchell said these are so-called "good" coyotes that feed only on what they catch or scavenge in the wild and don't threaten people. They have learned to bring down full-sized deer in the winter, she said. They eat voles in the summer. In the fall they eat apples and grapes.
By guarding their territory, they keep out other coyotes, including those that have become habituated and cause problems.
Mitchell has learned that problem coyotes are created by a range of people: an elderly woman who feeds dozens of cats outdoors, children in a neighborhood who put out food because they like to see the coyotes, a farmer who couldn't bury some dead livestock one winter.
When coyotes cause trouble, Charlie Brown gets called. He is a wildlife biologist at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, and he estimates the department gets a few hundred calls every year about coyotes.
"People keep saying they didn't know they had coyotes in their neighborhoods and some criticize us for not doing more to tell them," Brown said.
Brown says he has done necropsies on about 100 coyotes and found they eat everything from deer to apples to Reese's candies -- anything they can find.
Mitchell has prepared a "Best Management Practices" plan for communities to follow to reduce coyote problems, all of which focus on removing excess food sources.
She hopes to take the program national.
It includes removing roadkill deer that provide food for coyotes, reducing deer herds through more hunting, helping farmers clean up livestock carcasses, eliminating the intentional feeding of coyotes and taking aggressive action against coyotes that have lost their fear of people.
Mitchell worked recently with Ralph Pratt, a veterinarian, and Melissa Harrington, a technician, to quickly tranquilize the coyote they trapped behind the Middletown Police Station. They measured and weighed the coyote. They took a blood sample. And they fitted him with a radio collar designed to stay on for exactly six months. After the collar drops off, it will continue transmitting signals so the team can retrieve it.
Mitchell says she hopes by following the GPS tracking of the coyote she can figure out where it is getting its food and determine if any of the food is coming from people. She said she also hopes the trapping experiences will reawaken the coyote's fears of people and keep him safer.
For more information, go to: www.theconservationagency.org/coyote.htm.
(Reach Peter B. Lord at plord(at)projo.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit The Providence Journal
