Recent incidents suggest that coyotes are growing less timid
Once-wild critters seem to be moving in
City and suburban dwellers might want to get used to the idea of bumping into a new kind of four-legged neighbor in the coming years.
Coyotes have been living in the region for more than three decades, but recent encounters in North Tonawanda— including the killing of one of the animals by a police officer on Thursday morning — suggest that they have learned to adapt more comfortably to metropolitan surroundings.
“I think what’s happening is, they’re becoming more accustomed to the suburbs and the urban areas,” said Mark Kandel, regional wildlife manager for the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
Kandel talked with The Buffalo News after a man was bitten just after midnight Thursday near a wooded area along Zimmerman Street in North Tonawanda.
The man was the third person bitten by a coyote in the city in the last three weeks.
A city police officer who responded to the biting report shot the animal to death after it walked toward his patrol car and nearly put its front paws onto the driver’s-side window.
Niagara County Environmental Health Director James J. Devald disclosed this afternoon that results of testing on the animal's brain, conducted today at the state Health Department's Wadsworth Laboratory in Albany, showed that the coyote did not have rabies.
This is the time of year where human contact with coyotes begins to ratchet up, Kandel said, and just because a coyote approaches a human, “It’s not necessarily an indication the coyote is sick.”
Coyotes are an adaptable species that can adjust their diet and activities to their surroundings. Kandel said coyotes typically are most active at night and at dawn and dusk. But this time of year happens to be the season when coyote mothers have their litters and have to go hunting for food to sustain themselves and their offspring.
“They have more mouths to feed, so they have to be active,” Kandel said.
As the year wears on and the babies are weaned from mother’s milk, the adult coyotes will become even more active, seeking food to share with the pups. That means there will probably be more coyote sightings through summer, Kandel said.
North Tonawanda Mayor Lawrence V. Soos said DEC officials have told him they will allow the city to hire a trapper to reduce the coyote population. State environmental officials also have agreed to set up a presentation to help keep residents informed, he said.
Soos also wonders if the same coyote is responsible for all three biting incidents in the city.
“I kind of have a feeling it’s the same [one], because I don’t think you’d have three different coyotes with the same disposition to go up and bite people,” the mayor said. He also noted that all three attacks occurred in the same general area and between 10 p. m. and 1 a. m.
The man who was bitten won’t have to undergo the lengthy series of rabies shots because of today's test results, Devald said.
Because the coyotes who bit two other city residents weren’t caught, those men won’t be so fortunate, he said.
About 10 p. m. Monday, a man walking along Niagara Falls Boulevard near the old Wurlitzer plant was bitten, the county Health Department reported Wednesday.
On March 31, another person was bitten by a coyote at about 2 a. m. on Sweeney Street.
No one knows with any certainty what the area’s coyote population is or even whether it’s increasing, Kandel said. “There’s no census technique for coyotes,” he said.
He said the majority of coyote pups die before their first birthday. Litters are generally five to seven babies.
Although a coyote’s typical diet is rodents and small mammals, they can expand their menu.
“When they move into suburban areas, they’ll adapt to what’s there: garbage, cat food or dog food that’s left out. They will eat small dogs and small cats,” Kandel said.
“Brushy habitat, like we have in Niagara and northern Erie County, is good for coyotes,” he said. They favor the same kinds of spots where rodents such as mice and rabbits live, including fields and lots that are reverting back to nature from former cultivation.
“Having a coyote in North Tonawanda is not a surprise,” Kandel said.
Normally, a coyote wouldn’t approach a person, but as there are more generations of coyotes reared near residential areas, “They become used to humans and lose that fear,” he said.
Biting incidents can result because humans may have food odors on their clothing that the sensitive noses of animals can detect.
“They’ll be more likely to associate humans with food,” Kandel said. “We have food odors in our homes, on our clothing, all the time. You smell just like the fish fry you put in the garbage.”
Devald said that confirmed cases of coyote rabies are rare in New York. There was only one such case in the state last year, and only seven in the last 10 years.
Kandel said a fox that approaches a person is almost certainly rabid. “It’s almost unheard of for a healthy fox to approach a human,” he said. “Foxes don’t seem to adapt to urban areas the way coyotes do.”
Contact with coyotes should be reported to police or the local Health Department. Pets that have contact with wildlife should be reported, too, even if they’ve already had rabies shots.
In such a case, Devald said, “the pet needs a booster.”
News Staff Reporter Gene Warner contributed to this report. tprohaska@buffnews.com
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