Employing motion-sensored lights and sprinklers can keep coyotes away from your yards and gardens. (Photo by John Harrison — Project Coyote)
Deer love our well-watered gardens (particularly when the hills have gone from green to gold). Skunks, raccoons, opossums and other nocturnal wild animals regularly visit (and often inhabit) our yards. These creatures are drawn to our neighborhoods because we create lush landscapes that offer lots of food and sheltered places to rest and to hide during daylight hours. Another wild animal that frequently visits suburban places is the coyote. Most people are more or less tolerant of animals like deer or raccoons, but some tend to have a different reaction when they start seeing coyotes on a regular basis.
Native American cultures, which shared the land with coyotes, knew them as “creators” and “tricksters,” and held them in high regard. They recognized that coyotes are extremely intelligent and adaptable animals. This adaptability and resourcefulness allows coyotes to quickly learn which neighborhoods are great sources of pet food, garbage, compost piles and the rodents that are attracted to all of these same delicacies. They are also quite fond of fruits and vegetables, which can be plentiful in our gardens, particularly during summer and fall.
But, because coyotes have a bad reputation, people often react to their presence with fear, and demand that something is done to remove them. Many communities that have followed this course have learned that this is not an effective, ecologically sound or ethically justifiable approach, as killing creates a vacant territorial niche that will soon be filled by other coyotes. Moreover, lethal control can result in greater pup survival, thus increasing the local coyote population.
The good news is that coyotes are ecologically important. If we respond by removing the attractions that draw them to our neighborhoods — including keeping pets, especially cats, indoors — they respond by looking for food elsewhere.
Another important element in the effort to keep coyotes in their natural environment is “hazing”: making streets and yards less comfortable for coyotes that visit on a regular basis by reinforcing their natural wariness of people. This can be done by being big, bad and loud — and employing deterrents such as motion-activated lights and sprinklers.
The key element in reducing conflicts between coyotes and people is educating people about ways to make neighborhoods less attractive to coyotes, which teaches coyotes that there are better places to look for food, water and shelter. Those coyotes teach their pups the same thing — stay away from places where you see or smell those annoying two-legged creatures. For more information about coexisting with coyotes, go to projectcoyote.org.
Human conflicts with coyotes are not confined to urban situations; In the past, ranchers used leghold traps and poisons in an effort to reduce coyote predation on livestock in West Marin, but such methods have had questionable efficacy, pose a threat to non-target animals and have been restricted in California as a result.
Since 2000, the Marin County Department of Agriculture has overseen implementation of a unique program that helps ranchers employ nonlethal predator deterrents including guard dogs, llamas, better fencing and other methods of “predator proofing” livestock through a county-run cost-share program. This innovative approach replaced federally subsidized lethal predator control and has become a model for nonlethal predator control across the country.
Originally reported by David Herlocker, Marin Humane Society in Marin Independent Journal, December 15, 2014.
David Herlocker is an interpretive naturalist for Marin County Parks. The Marin Humane Society contributes Tails of Marin articles and welcomes animal-related questions and stories about the people and animals in our community. Go to MarinHumaneSociety.org, Twitter @MarinHumane, or email lbloch@MarinHumaneSociety.org
