Out of the Woodwork
What to know about coyotes in your backyard
—By Brian Ankrapp
Five years ago, I spent the night at my godmother’s family home in rural Michigan. It was a moonless night, and I went out to see the Milky Way. It was my first time seeing it arc across the sky. My stargazing was interrupted by one yip then another. A cacophony of maniac cackles and howls quickly filled the night air. The coyotes were like the hyenas I had heard in documentaries about the African savanna. Shivers rolled down my spine.
Since then, I have heard those same late-night cries in my Metro Detroit home and in the Nichols Arboretum on Central Campus. I have even seen a coyote run down Lakeshore Boulevard in Grosse Pointe. Coyotes are here in our cities and neighborhoods. Coyotes can weigh between 25 and 40 pounds, and are known to kill dogs and cats. Their wild howling can make anyone a little uneasy. However, coyotes are also purported to be a valuable part of Michigan ecosystems, and many say that coyotes actually pose little threat to people and pets. All this conflicting information gets muddied in a sea of anecdotes and personal opinion. Residents are raising concern about this problem and local governments are reaching out for input. What is to be done regarding coyotes, and where does the truth lie?
A newcomer from the west
To understand coyotes in urban areas today, one must understand the history of wolves and coyotes. Wolves once dominated the lower Great Lakes, while the area was on the very eastern end of coyote range. However, in the 19th and early 20th century, the federal government placed high bounties on wolves and trapping became such a lucrative business that the timber wolf was eradicated from all but the remotest margins of the continental United States.
Coyotes began to expand in association with the wolf’s decline and the felling of forests for farmland, which more resembled the open spaces of the coyote’s prairie home. However, coyote expansion was in spite of massive persecution mirroring that of the wolf; massive poisoning campaigns wiped out six and a half million coyotes between 1947 and 1956. Five hundred-thousand coyotes are still killed every year in America, but the species thrives all the same,now inhabiting nearly every corner of North America.
Coyotes are able to eat just about anything they come across, primarily rodents, but also everything from deer fawns to berries and food waste. The flexibility of coyote diet has allowed them to better cohabit with people in Southeast Michigan, even in urban centers. Though often assumed that they occupy greenspaces primarily and only wander beyond sporadically, research has shown that they display only a slight preference for patches of woodland and have colonized urban places such as depopulated suburban Detroit. Low-density neighborhoods are just as much their habitat as the forest, bringing them into conflict with people.
A growing awareness of coyotes in our neighborhoods
Over the past few years, there has been an increasing awareness of coyotes patrolling urban streets. This has occurred in conjunction with many Americans moving into exurbs far from city centers. Furbearer & Upland Game Bird Specialist at the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Adam Bump stated in a 2022 interview with Civic Center TV, “They’ve learned how to read and interpret human behavior, and when they become comfortable with us, and understand more of what we’re doing day to day, they’re more willing to be visible.”
Dan Kashian is a landscape ecologist and professor at Wayne State University with expertise in Michigan ecosystems. He recalls a conversation he has had with Detroit Free Press writer Eric Sharp, “There’s a bike path that goes up [Interstate] 275 there between 14 and 96…. And he said he would sit there and just watch the coyotes at three o’clock in the afternoon, just watch the coyotes run up the bike path. And people just have no idea. They’re everywhere and they’ve been around.” Coyotes have been present for decades in populous southeast Michigan and nearly as long in its urban areas. Only recently coyotes have seemed to grow more numerous due to an increased level of comfort around people, allowing them to be more easily spotted.
If you know what to listen for, one can often hear their howling near the edge of town late at night. This can be an unnerving sound for pet owners, who fear an opportunistic coyote might take their pet in the night. Dogs are a minor component of coyote diet in Michigan. “It is a legitimate beef [concern] that they will attack your pets. They view your pets as one of those generalist prey species,” says Kashian. “People hear those stories, they hear the coyotes themselves, and that’s when their fear is highest.” One does not need to dig deeply on websites such as Nextdoor to find stories of concerned residents reporting coyotes in their community.
On the other hand, fear that coyotes will attack people is poorly substantiated, something emphasized by Kashian. Approximately eight coyote attacks are reported annually across the United States and Canada, with nearly half of those occurring in California. In comparison, 4.5 million people are bitten by dogs annually in the United States, with 800,000 of those victims seeking medical attention. Although one should still try to avoid human-wildlife interaction and practice common sense safety, it is not a genuine larger-scale concern.
Coyotes in the news
All of this has led to coyotes growing in Michigan’s public consciousness. Earlier this month, Dearborn mayor Abdullah H. Hammoud held a city council meeting on coyote presence in the Detroit suburb, citing an increasing concern about coyotes in the neighborhoods and inspired by reports of coyotes eating feral cats and even attacks on house pets. Although Dearborn currently does not have any direct management plans, such a meeting could pave the way for further action.
In March, the DNR curtailed the coyote hunting season, restricting access during denning so as not to unnecessarily orphan pups. Although hailed as an achievement by animal rights advocates such as PETA, hunting advocacy groups have filed lawsuits against the decision of the state, claiming that the change has little basis in science and that coyote populations are stable in Michigan. Prior to the change, coyotes were able to be hunted year-round and trapped from October through March with no limit. Licenses are relatively easy to obtain in Michigan as one only needs a base license for hunting and a furbearer license for trapping, which also can be used to capture other small game such as stoats or beavers.
Part of a bigger picture
An argument often made on behalf of coyotes in favor of their protection is that they serve an ecologically valuable role. Coyotes, as predators, may mirror the role the wolves who preceded them played but in an altered landscape. According to Jill Fritz, senior director for wildlife protection at the Humane Society of the United States in an interview with the Detroit Free Press, “[Coyotes] help control disease transmission by keeping rodent populations in check. Coyotes also clean up carrion, remove sick animals from the gene pool, and protect crops and gardens.”
Michigan deer populations are unnaturally high thanks to a lack of predators and access to calories in agriculture. A majority of coyote calories in southeast Michigan came from deer. Furthermore, coyotes in the east beyond the range of wolves have been shown to possess a more wolf-like niche, partially thanks to hybridization with vagrant wolves (This does little to quell the fears of their detractors.) Coyotes in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula consume more meat than their Upper Peninsula counterparts, who are more opportunistic, living in the shadow of their larger cousins.
Evidence might suggest that coyotes do serve a valuable role in the ecosystem, particularly as they grow to occupy a more wolf-like niche. Digging deeper, the story is a little more complicated. Although coyotes primarily eat deer in Michigan, a study performed in southwest Michigan found that only one out of seventy-five fawns in the study was victim to suspected coyote predation. Coyotes do not provide a significant population control for deer as almost all the deer they eat are already dead.
With regards to their effect on smaller prey populations, “Whether they’re reducing those populations in an ecologically significant way, I can’t say for sure, but I would suspect they’re not,” says Kashian. “I don’t know that they’re really affecting the population dynamics of their prey too much because there’s just so many of them [prey] around.”
Coyotes are generalists. They are able to feed on a variety of things and occupy a range of habitats to make ends meet, and that flexibility is what has allowed coyotes to thrive in the city. This also means that coyotes just skim off the top of many organism populations without greatly altering the relative amounts of their prey. This small effect is further reduced when considering the large size of their prey populations relative to coyote consumption. Unfortunately, it looks like coyotes are likely not doing much to stop cottontails from tearing up your garden.
Residents’ takes on coyotes
By keeping up with the local news or browsing social media sites, it is easy to become concerned about coyotes. They look like big dangerous animals, are elusive even when present, and seem to take pets left and right. This concern seems to also be echoed by a general population, who take up their strong opinions to message boards and news articles.
However, public stories amplify the most gripping stories and outspoken stances. This may give a false impression of how most area residents feel about coyotes in their neighborhoods. Ann Arbor resident and dog owner Courtney McCreadie stated with regards to the possibility of encountering a coyote, “It hasn’t really crossed my mind.” When pressed with what she thinks about reports of increased coyote presence, she added, “That would make me think, okay, it’s three o’clock in the morning, he [her dog] needs to go out there on a leash.” With a fenced backyard and a watchful eye, common sense practices keep her small dog safe.
Her opinion was echoed by Michelle, a Livingston county resident who works in Ann Arbor, “I’ve seen them in broad daylight or twilight just where I live, near Howell. But I know they’re around, it doesn’t particularly concern me. I’ve never seen them in a pack, I’ve just seen one occasionally. Usually they’re running too.” Almost all reports mentioned how quickly they will pass through an area, rarely spending more time than needed around people.
Hearing isolated stories of what coyotes can do makes it easy to become concerned, especially when it seems like many people share that opinion. Though that feeling is valid and understandable as a thoughtful pet owner, anecdotes often escape the realm of reality.
Kyle Bucholtz is a law enforcement officer with the Michigan DNR and has dealt with coyote reports, but finds that they are often underwhelming, “I’ve responded to various calls…. We don’t deal with that coyote-human interaction that other people have said. I’ve personally seen coyotes on patrol before when I was on patrol through a field at work. I was coming up on it, and it didn’t want anything to do with me. There’s a misconception of the animal, they’re a shy dog basically.”
Earlier, he told a story about one of his reports, “I remember one time a woman had called saying, a coyote had killed her dog, a coyote had killed her dog, but it actually turns out that it was her neighbor’s dog.” He affirms, “People look at coyotes and they’re ultimately fearful, and we don’t deal with that. We don’t deal with that kind of issue.”
A little perspective on Michigan wildlife
Lower Michigan has been absent of wolves or any other large predator for a century. Every forest has been logged and most wetlands have been drained. It is a fundamentally human landscape, and it can be hard to understand what a landscape with true apex predators is like. Kashian, who has spent time doing research across America recalls his experience camping and studying in the Rocky Mountains and how that changed how he saw his place in the ecosystem.
“When I first went out west as a graduate student, it was totally different. Sleeping in a tent, knowing that there are grizzly bears around. It’s very different than sleeping in a tent in northern lower Michigan where the biggest thing might be an elk or something, if you’re lucky…. Incidentally, that’s why most of the coyote work that you see is in the east and not west because people just laugh at ‘em out west, you know?”
Feature Photo: A coyote roams through a field of dried grasses by mana5280 on Unsplash