What You Should Know As North Shore Coyote Pup Season Begins

SWAMPSCOTT, MA — With the arrival of spring typically bringing an increase in coyote sightings across the North Shore in recent years, as pups begin to mature and adults protect them and their territories, two recent presentations outlined ways that cities and towns can deter human and pet interaction without resorting to the extreme — and believed to be largely ineffective — response of attempting to eradicate the wild canine population.

Former Animal Control Officer Dan Proulx, a local problem animal control agent, held a talk with the Swampscott Conservancy at Swampscott High School on Tuesday night, while last week a group of North Shore residents looking to promote alternatives to Nahant's plan to "dispatch" so-called habituated coyotes promoted the online presentation "Living With Coyotes 2023" aimed at educating residents and town officials about coyote behavior and when and how to react to it.

Humane Wildlife Inc. expert Rebecca Dmytryk hosted that presentation where she promoted aversion techniques to disperse coyotes from neighborhoods through "hazing" as well as preventing coyotes from viewing humans and homes as welcome places of food and shelter.

Dmytryk disputed the oft-repeated notion that once coyotes become "habituated" to humans they are not able to be cured of that behavior and then need to be destroyed.

"It's outdated," she said of the term. "It's been replaced with the more appropriate term 'conditioned.' Conditioned coyotes are those who, for example, associate food rewards with a particular person or a particular backyard. They still retain their fear of people and still respond to aversion techniques, they just increase their tolerance.

"This is absolutely reversible."

Dmytryk said that while coyotes feed primarily on rodents, rabbits, berries, nuts and grass, they can become conditioned to seeing humans as a food source if it is often left out unintentionally — through trash, composting, bird feeders, littering, or an uncleaned grill — or intentionally — through leaving food out for feral cats, or even for the coyotes.

She said eliminating the food source, and shelter sources such as sheds, barns and other abandoned structures on a person's or business's property, will go a long way toward convincing the coyotes there is no viable reason to remain in the area.

She added that research has shown that coyotes that attack dogs and cats will often do so not for a food source, but to eliminate perceived competition for a food source. A coyote that would run away from a human walking alone is more apt to stand its ground if that person is walking a dog.

This is especially the case, she said, in the spring when coyotes are protecting pups. They are territorial and there is a timeframe from late March through May when the pups are too big to be able to be moved to a new location but too young to be let out on their own, so coyotes will determine it necessary to guard their territory against intruders.

"It is important to be very conscientious of the time of year and beware of seasonal milestones so you can be prepared for an encounter," she said. "The answer there is really simple. Remove the food, or their access to it, and eliminate the shelter resources, and their presence will also be redirected.

"Eliminate the consumables and you will eliminate the consumers."

She said that while coyotes will not associate humans with being food, they can be conditioned to associate them with leading to a food source, the same way jackals will closely follow lions across prairies in Africa.

"With certain conditioned coyotes they will then get frustrated if they've learned to come close to a human for food and get rewarded when that doesn't happen," she said. "It's like putting a coin in a vending machine and nothing comes out.

"So that is when they might nip."

Proulx told Patch last summer that is likely what happened in the nipping incident in Vinnin Square when a woman bringing leftovers to her car in the Bertucci's parking lot said she was bitten by a coyote that followed her in the parking lot.

Proulx also said that coyotes prowling their territory can make what may only be two, three or four coyotes in a pack seem like "dozens" of reported coyotes across a small town like Swampscott.

One problem with "removing" these coyotes from urban areas, according to Dmytryk is the nature of that territoriality with the canines. While a family pack will manage a territory of two to four miles in an urban setting, "eliminating" them from that area will create a new turf war that will attract many more times the coyotes that were in the pack to the vacated area in an attempt to fill the void.

Essentially, she indicated, killing coyotes in an area where a few have set up shop only increases the competing coyote population in that area.

She said, while rare, coyote attacks on people often have a logical explanation. For example, in the well-publicized case this winter of a toddler that a coyote grabbed from a Los Angeles driveway as her father got out of the SUV, Dmytryk said that the driveway had recently been a construction site where food remnants were often left at the end of the day, and where coyotes had become conditioned to feed.

"The coyotes probably did not even know it was grabbing a live child," she said. "It was going after what it thought was food because the child was wearing a puffy outfit and probably smelled like snacks."

Because the city did not have the means to investigate and determine the cause of the attack, Dmytrk said, the entire family pack of coyotes was killed.

"This was preventable," she said.

She determined that while residents should be aware of coyote seasons and behaviors, cities and towns need to set up a "coyote-response plan" involving data collection and protocols on how to monitor coyotes, institute city ordinances or town bylaws against feeding wildlife, and protocols for the rare case of a sick, injured or aggressive coyote that does not respond to aversion techniques, on when and how to remove them.

The full "Life With Coyotes 2023" presentation can be found here.

(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.)