Among Us

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Among Us
As more coyotes are spotted in the Washington area, residents are facing a disturbing reality: They are here to stay.

There was a paradox in all this. Over the past 20 years, residents of suburban Washington had become accustomed to living amid ever-growing herds of azalea-stripping deer, flocks of lawn-fouling and territorial Canada geese, as well as raccoon and squirrel populations far more dense than they would be in rural areas. But coyotes were something different: medium-size predators, with a wolf-like appearance and a reputation for wiliness, who seemed to stir a primal fear of wolves that came to this continent with European settlement.

Hays said the coyotes of Fallsgrove could be heard at night singing along with the ambulances that arrived at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital, just across the road. The sound they made, high-pitched yips and barks that culminated in long yodels, wasn't exactly a wolf howl. It was shorter, less haunting maybe. But it was thrilling and beautiful all the same. It was also anxiety-making, Hays said. It sounded like a whole lot of coyotes. What was going on out there in the dark? Whose subdivision was it, anyway?

ACTUALLY, THE COYOTES AT FALLSGROVE WERE ALMOST OVERDUE. Washington is the last major metropolitan area in the country to be colonized by coyotes. They arrived in Maryland and Virginia about 20 years ago, after expanding their range into every part of the continental United States except the southernmost tip of Florida. (They showed up there about five years ago.) By 2004, when coyotes first were sighted in Rock Creek Park, large populations already were ensconced in suburban Westchester County, outside New York City, as well as Boston, Nashville, Phoenix, Houston and elsewhere. Last month, a coyote on the loose in Central Park, at the latitude of 66th Street, made headlines -- "Beep! Beep! Wily Coyote Captured." It was the second coyote to show up in Manhattan in recent years. In downtown Chicago, coyotes have been spotted trotting back and forth across Michigan Avenue. Outside Boston, the presence of coyotes has provoked a fierce debate in the state legislature about reintroducing leg-hold traps, currently banned as cruel and unnecessary. In California, coyotes have been a fact of urban life for decades. On the beaches of Santa Barbara, when bathers go into the water, coyotes come out of the brush to sniff beach towels.

The coyote -- biological cousin of the wolf, fox and dog -- has roamed the Plains states for at least 15,000 years. The coyotes' outward migration began about a century ago. They moved east and west, filling the ecological vacuum left by human efforts to eradicate wolves from the lower 48 states. Coyotes expanded west first, toward California. Eastward expansion began a few decades later, along two routes, one due east and southeast, through the Gulf States, and the other northeast, into Canada, and eventually down into New England and along the East Coast. Wildlife biologists believe that the coyotes now showing up in the Washington area may be part of both eastward migrations: the smaller, Western coyotes -- 20 to 35 pounds -- of the due-east migration; and larger coyotes from the Canadian migration. Coyotes in this second group weigh 35 to 50 pounds, because of interbreeding with Canadian wolves.

Wildlife trappers in Washington's outermost suburbs -- Virginia's Fauquier County and Maryland's Washington County -- say coyote numbers have grown slowly but steadily. Coyote density in Western Maryland is now estimated to be about that of the American West.

Trappers have a saying about coyotes, said Fauquier County trapper Sam Poles. "The only thing that will survive a nuclear war is cockroaches and coyotes. Best thing I can tell you about coyotes is: Learn their habits, and be prepared to live with them. 'Cause once you get them in the suburbs, you're not getting rid of them."

But living with them may be easier said than done. "Coyotes are canids, and people have always had a love-hate relationship with canids," said Stan Gehrt, a wildlife biologist and director of the Cook County Coyote Project in suburban Chicago. "A lot of our wolf control was done more out of fear more than any damage they did. Wolves just made us uncomfortable."

Coyotes seem to have a similar effect. Around the country, the presence of coyotes seems to divide the human population into two groups: pro-coyote people, who advocate benign co-existence, and those who think even one coyote around is one too many. "Usually, for people to consider an animal to be a nuisance, that animal has to cause damage or cause inconvenience," Gehrt said. "But coyotes are the one species that can be considered a nuisance simply by being fleetingly seen. The question is: Can we adjust our level of tolerance to them as we find out more about them?"

COYOTES HAVE BEEN SEEN IN THE DISTRICT -- crossing Massachusetts Avenue in Rock Creek Park, running along Arizona Avenue, as well as on suburban lawns in Silver Spring and at Dulles International Airport. For all that, however, it isn't easy to conjure up a coyote on demand here -- not yet, anyway. But there is another city, clear across the continent, where a sighting of an urban coyote is almost guaranteed. That is Vancouver.

Vancouver is 10 years ahead of Washington on the coyote curve, biologists say. In 1995, coyote sightings in Vancouver were a novelty, as they are here today. But within five years, coyotes had become a public safety issue. In 2001, there were at least six reported coyote attacks on small children. The city's tabloid newspaper took enthusiastic note of each one. "Coyote Savages Baby Girl in City," screamed one headline. "Vicious Coyote Sunk Its Teeth Into Baby's Cheek," blared another. "Baby Ruth's Beastly Bite."

Public reaction was polarized. "The best way to get rid of coyotes is to shoot them," said one letter to the editor. Others held the opposite view. "Before our emotions get the best of us, and we go ahead with a coyote cull, we might consider the dire consequences," said another. "We'll be up to our ears in cats and rats." Others pointed out that dog bites, an average of 250 a year within the city, far exceeded coyote bites, and no one was calling for the mass eradication of dogs.

Before mass poisoning or any other measures could be proposed, however, a local wildlife biologist came up with a plan that quickly reduced the number of coyote bites to zero, where it has remained since. The plan, known as "Co-Existing With Coyotes" and run out of a small, one-man office on the grounds of Vancouver's huge Stanley Park, has been so successful that city managers from across North America phone regularly for advice and information.