Coyote Sightings Bring Cameras To Inwood Hill Park

INWOOD, NY — Coyotes more typically found in Queens or The Bronx might have made their way to Inwood Hill Park, and prompted a new set-up of cameras to track the wild animals, parks officials said this week.

The city's Parks Department sent out a notice Saturday warning residents to not get too close and to protect their pets from coyotes that residents say have been spotted in the 196-acre park, which borders the Bronx, where the animals are more typically known to live.

The Parks Department didn't say how many sightings there have been, but at least five residents had discussed spotting the coyotes on a Facebook group set up for Inwood dog owners.

"...At first I saw only one and thought, 'Oh my god that’s a stray dog, should we go after it?'" Samantha Arbuiso wrote on the group on Jan. 19. "We started walking up the hill towards the baseball field and then right there at the top to the right were 2 more!!"

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Arbuiso, who had been walking in the park with her two dogs, said the animals she later confirmed by looking at photos online were coyotes seemed to be about 50 to 60 pounds each and "scrawny."

She was one of at least five people that reported seeing the coyotes in the Facebook group, some of whom said they also saw "pups."

The reports from residents are still unverified, the parks department told Patch, but officials hope monitoring the park can help confirm whether the animals are there. The department's Urban Park Rangers and Wildlife Divisions have installed cameras in Inwood Hill Park to monitor any coyote activity, officials said in the notice.

Inwood Hill Park wouldn't be the first place coyotes have traveled recently in the Big Apple.

"We’ve known that coyotes have been living in New York City for about thirty years," the department said. "They live mostly in the Bronx and have more recently been spotted in the north end of Central Park and Pelham Bay and Van Cortlandt Parks in the Bronx, among other places. Naturally curious and adaptable, coyotes can explore as much as 10 miles of open space in a single day."

There had been 36 coyote sightings reported in Manhattan as of Dec. 15, officials said at the time one was spotted in Central Park late last year. Multiple reports may be related to the same animal, according to a city Parks Department spokesperson.

Researchers with the Gotham Coyote Project, which studies the city's coyotes, said the Inwood Hill Park sightings could be significant if the animals that were spotted stick around. Usually, coyotes spotted in Manhattan "show up for a bit and then disappear" either back to the Bronx or because they were hit by a car or something, Gotham co-founder Chris Nagy said.

"So ecologically little jaunts like [the Inwood sightings] are not all that significant," he said. "But this could be the first one/pair that might stay and perhaps set up a den, which would be significant."

Nagy and his team are also planning on setting up cameras in the park to confirm the residents' sightings and keep track of the animals.

Parks officials said they plan to do "coyote co-existing outreach" in Washington Heights and Inwood, as they have been doing near Central Park since the sighting, officials said. Their Wildlife Unit will be at the 34th Precinct's Community Council meeting on Wednesday and at Central Park Precinct’s Community Council meeting on Wednesday, March 11, the department said.

"If you cross paths with wildlife in New York City, respect them the same way you would any other New Yorker, and give them plenty of space," the department advised.

They said residents who see coyotes to not feed them, observe them from a distance and make themselves look bigger by putting their arms up or making load noises if one of the animals approaches them. Residents should also store all food and garbage in animal-proof containers, officials said.

Sightings can be reported to the WildlifeNYC website.