Coyotes and People

 Watching wildlife is a wonderful experience. There may be coyotes in your area. 
What can you do to ensure safe coyote interactions?
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10 Tips for Safety in Coyote Encounters

This photo helps you recognize a common coyote in the wild.
Wild coyotes have become common. Their numbers are increasing and they show up in many neighborhoods where they’ve never been before. Coyote/people encounters take place in both suburbs and cities. The last thing anyone wants is a coyote attack.  Most people want to keep the coyotes away without harming them. Here are ten tips to help you minimize conflicts with coyotes.
10. Build Sturdy Fencing
Six-foot fences are a start. Add overhangs and barbed-wire aprons at the base to prevent digging. Install an electric fence around a yard. Add fencing around gardens, compost piles, and water ponds, as well.

9. Broadcast Noise
Loud noises and surprising sounds can scare off coyotes that have approached or entered your yard. Try out different kinds of noisemakers. There are motion-activated alarms that broadcast noise, including one that recreates cougar sounds. Radios, sirens, can also be deterrents air horns. Hang up or string out children’s toys or things that make a racket—jangles, bangs, whirrs, or knockers.

8. Use Motion-Activated Lighting
Set up and adjust flood lights over likely coyote approaches. Place motion-activated lighting that a coyote will trigger. Try a set up with strobe lights and sirens run by a timer. Even blinking holiday lights can act as a deterrent.

7. Get Rid of Food and Water Sources
NEVER feed coyotes—feeding will not help the coyote and it will not tame the coyote, ever.
Prevent foraging by coyotes—Coyotes will eat anything they find. Remove or block access to any food or water sources in your yard.  This might be garbage cans, compost bins, pet bowls, birdfeeders, barbecue grills, and fruit trees. Coyotes will eat birdseed and fallen fruit, as well as the birds and rodents as they feed. Cover fish ponds—coyotes will eat the fish as well as drink the water.

6. Keep Pets (and Children) In Sight
Coyotes view dogs, cats, and pets as prey for attacking, mating, or an easy meal.
Dogs should be spayed or neutered as coyotes will try to mate with them. Keep all pets inside at night, dusk, and dawn. Keep an eye on them during the day or use a kennel or run with a secured top. For outside cats, install a wood post at least 7 feet tall with a space on the top for the cat to sit.

5. Use Noxious Odors as Deterrents
Coyotes tend to avoid strong odors. Use spray bottles or soaked rags placed at strategic locations. Try these coyote deterrents:
  *  human scent, such as cologne or perfume
  *  mothballs
  *  ammonia-soaked rags
  *  mix a bottle of vinegar and Tabasco sauce with cayenne, jalapeno, etc.

Contact with a Coyote

4. Scare Off with Noise-Makers
From a distance make a lot of unusual noise. Slam metal trash can lids. Bang together pots and pans. Wave arms and yell loudly. Carry an air horn, shrill whistle, or noisemakers. Make a Coyote Shaker by putting pennies or pebbles into a soft drink can. Seal it with duct tape.

3. Spray Coyotes with Garden Hose
In your yard, have a garden hose handy. Or set up a rotating sprinkler that you can turn on from a distance. Get a device that is a motion sensor that sets off a spray of water when a coyote moves into range. 

2. Use Spray Irritants
Use spray bottles or a child’s power water gun. Fill with vinegar, boiled jalapeno water, ammonia, diluted Tabasco sauce, or citronella spray. Try water balloons filled with the irritating liquids and throw if a coyote approaches. Be careful with this approach as the balloons make break over your hands.

1. Apply Wolf Urine
This is actually a natural and rather innovative solution that works. Wolves are one of the few predators of coyotes. Coyote populations drop when wolves move into their territory. Place drops of wolf urine at strategic spots around your space. Wolf urine may be purchased from certain outdoors suppliers.
Source Facts: Colorado Division of Wildlife (CDOW)
Coyotes may be here to stay. You might think to trap and release, but simply relocating coyotes doesn’t seem to work. We will have to find new ways to live in harmony with our coyote neighbors. Share this information with your neighbors and home-owner’s associations. It takes a whole neighborhood working together to discourage and reduce coyote encounters.
Note: You should know the rules about the protection of coyotes in your region. It is illegal to kill coyotes in some states and provinces, and there are strict regulations in other areas.

Interested in animals, people, and the environment? Read more articles like this in Environment.

Comments

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posted 12/07/2013
I like to see them. They don’t get too close to my yard, but it’s good to know. I think I’ll carry one of those coyote shakers when I walk the dog from now on.
  Angie2Be