Parks Canada to launch study of aggressive coyotes

Alyshah Hasham Staff Reporter

After a spate of coyote attacks on humans in a Cape Breton national park, including the death of 19-year-old Taylor Mitchell in 2009, an American urban coyote expert was mystified.

?In Nova Scotia the coyotes up there are breaking the rules,? Stanley Gehrt told the Star in 2010, noting that coyote attacks in North America are generally rare.

Now the chair of McGraw?s Center for Wildlife Research and professor at Ohio State University, could have a chance to solve the mystery. Gehrt is two weeks away from being awarded a $100,000 contract from Parks Canada to develop a plan to reduce coyote aggression towards humans in the Nova Scotia park, unless a better candidate comes forward.

Some of the research areas proposed by Parks Canada in the call-out for the two-year project include ?whether human sourced foods played a role in the aggressive behaviour noted [and] whether there is a seasonal change in habitat use, which may be related to human activity.?

The animals will be live-trapped and fitted with GPS radio collars so they can be tracked. The project is scheduled to end by April, 2014.

Between April 2010 and March 2011, 104 reports of aggressive coyotes were investigated as part of the park?s coyote management program.

It was introduced after the death of Toronto native Taylor Mitchell, an emerging singer-songwriter who was hiking alone in the Cape Breton park in 2009 when she was mauled by two coyotes. She is the second recorded fatality from a coyote attack in North America, and the only adult.

Less than a year later a 16-year-old girl was bitten twice on the head by a coyote in the same park.

Gehrt, who has worked with Parks Canada to curb the Cape Breton coyote problem before, speculated that the aggressive behaviour of the Eastern Canadian coyotes stems from their genetic heritage ? a mix between coyote and wolf. ?It exhibits patterns like a wolf, like hunting together in a pack or group. Some people have speculated this has contributed to these animals considering humans as prey because they?re learning to kill large animals,? he said.

However, there is no research that can explain why Nova Scotia's coyotes have become more bold, an observation challenged by experts who say routine coyote encounters are getting more attention from the media. Some have suggested mild winters, urban sprawl and a diminished supply of snowshoe hares are to blame.

The province began offering a $20 bounty on coyotes in Oct. 2010, and also arranged for trappers to be trained to deal with dangerous ones. About 2,600 of the province's 8,000 coyotes were trapped last season for the bounty.

However, Derek Quann, a resource conservation manager with Parks Canada, said the province's decision to promote a cull was a bad idea. He said studies have shown bounties don't work because coyotes have the ability to reproduce quickly even when their population is under stress.

With files from Debra Black and the Canadian Press

Source: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1112981--parks-canada-to-launch-study-of-aggressive-cape-breton-coyotes

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