An enthusiastic conservation biologist's life in the sticks & travel adventures.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Coyotes think Chicago is their kind of town...
Pretty great story of urban coyotes living largely under the radar (tho' their collars map their movements), probably eating lots and lots of rats and mice along the way.
Let's hope they stick to mice and rats! A couple of years ago here they resorted to attacking dogs on leash in Golden Gate Park! Even ours here on the property can be rather intimidating, and they're absolutely fearless. I love seeing them, I'm just careful taking the dogs out at night when they're around!
Yeah, I think it's super interesting how when more people get away from hunting and actually understanding wildlife, big wildlife, they don't know to bring a big stick or something with which to intimidate or defend against that animal. Wildlife needs to know that we are not prey and a good way to do that is to be mean, frankly. Wildlife hazing is a very important thing biologists do in places where people want to feed/approach wild animals. When I ran after a coyote on our property I first stopped to pick up a board, in case the coyote decided to stop and face me. Not really a fight you want to lose for so many reasons, including the welfare of that animal.
Thanks for this post, bb. That's a really interesting study. I'm following another blogger who is a hunter and freely admits he'll shoot any coyote he sees. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
@Katie. You're welcome. Yeah, I think always killing a particular species no matter where you see it is pretty good evidence that there's not a really well thought out ecologically based plan at hand. That's quite a can of worms. Yow!
Let's hope they stick to mice and rats! A couple of years ago here they resorted to attacking dogs on leash in Golden Gate Park! Even ours here on the property can be rather intimidating, and they're absolutely fearless. I love seeing them, I'm just careful taking the dogs out at night when they're around!
ReplyDeleteWow.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think it's super interesting how when more people get away from hunting and actually understanding wildlife, big wildlife, they don't know to bring a big stick or something with which to intimidate or defend against that animal. Wildlife needs to know that we are not prey and a good way to do that is to be mean, frankly. Wildlife hazing is a very important thing biologists do in places where people want to feed/approach wild animals. When I ran after a coyote on our property I first stopped to pick up a board, in case the coyote decided to stop and face me. Not really a fight you want to lose for so many reasons, including the welfare of that animal.
Thanks for this post, bb. That's a really interesting study. I'm following another blogger who is a hunter and freely admits he'll shoot any coyote he sees. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
ReplyDelete@Katie. You're welcome. Yeah, I think always killing a particular species no matter where you see it is pretty good evidence that there's not a really well thought out ecologically based plan at hand. That's quite a can of worms. Yow!
ReplyDelete