North Shore Town Goes On Offensive Against Aggressive Coyotes

NAHANT, MA — As North Shore residents have become increasingly familiar with greater coyote populations that have an apparent lessened fear of humans in recent years, one community is taking an aggressive approach to "dispatch" of the habituated wild canines.

The Nahant Board of Selectmen voted on Wednesday to authorize Town Administrator Antonio Barletta to sign a cooperative service agreement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services to "conduct a cooperative wildlife management project" to rid the town of the problem coyotes.

Nahant is the first community in Massachusetts to hire USDA Wildlife services to shoot and kill coyotes.

"When coyotes become habituated and present a major significant public safety risk, we have to consider all legal means to eliminate that risk," Selectman Josh Antrim.

The move — which is opposed by animal rights groups such as the MSPCA's Advocacy Department — comes as many North Shore communities attempt to contain the coyote concerns by educating residents and businesses on the perils of providing food for the animals, which makes them more dependent and less fearful of humans, and promoting "coyote hazing" techniques such as making loud noises in residential neighborhoods to render them uncomfortable for the canines.

Swampscott recently urged residents to coyote-proof trash that attracts the animals by making sure all containers are covered and put out as close to pickup time as possible.

But Barletta noted that has not been enough across the state in recent months with multiple encounters that resulted in bites and the coyotes acting in a threatening manner.

In Swampscott alone, two people were bitten by a coyote in Vinnin Square three weeks apart, before another resident reported being surrounded by a group of coyotes while walking the family dog in October.

Dangerous coyote encounters were also reported or documented in Arlington, Hingham and on North Herring Cove Beach on the Cape Cod National Seashore.

Wildlife Services professionals have trained rifle experts on staff, who also serve as instructors to train others. Equipment includes night-vision, thermal-imaging scopes, and spotlights and all activities are permitted under a special permit from Mass Wildlife.

"The town of Nahant, like many other communities, has been dealing with habituated coyotes with multiple documented cases of aggressive behavior toward residents," said Board Chairman Gene Canty. "Mass Wildlife has authorized our community to dispatch the problem coyotes but our legal options of ways to do that are limited, ineffective, and not practical."

Mass Wildlife said that box cage traps, the only legal trap for coyotes in Massachusetts, have only successfully trapped three coyotes in the last 10 years across the state.

The dense population of Nahant — a characteristic it shares with several other North Shore communities — also does not allow itself to have law enforcement personnel discharge "warning shots" to disperse coyotes.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)