We are a group of researchers and wildlife scientists who work on the University of British Columbia Urban Wildlife Project (UBC UWP), which is an urban ecology project advancing our understanding of urban carnivores like raccoons, skunks, and coyotes.

Research Institution: The University of British Columbia | Unceded xwməθkwəy̓ əm Territory, Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences, Department of Zoology

Lab: Animal Behavior and Cognition Lab / UBC Urban Wildlife Research Project

Principal Investigator: Dr. Sarah Benson-Amram

This project is being funded by the BC Ministry of Water, Land, and Resource Stewardship and is being conducted with permission from the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation

1. We will collect some basic data to help us quantify how many coyotes live in the park and where they live. We will do this by collecting coyote scat in the park and analyzing it to see how much scat we collect, where we collect it, and which animal the scat is from (based on genetic analyses). We will also do some surveys where we look and listen for coyotes to help us calculate the population size and distribution of coyotes in the park.

2. We will study how living in an urban area is changing what coyotes eat, what time of day they are active, how healthy they are, where they live and which spaces they use, and how many coyotes they live with in their family groups. We will do this by placing GPS collars on adult coyotes in the park and looking at their movement and activity patterns. We will also analyze their diet, their health (presence of diseases or parasites), and their stress levels from their scat and from chemical signatures in their hair, whiskers, and blood samples.

3. We will study how coyotes respond to people by first quantifying how people are using the spaces in the park with infrared trail counters, online visitor surveys, and mapping the locations of trash cans and concessions in the park. We will then determine if coyotes tend to approach people or stay away from people at different locations by analyzing how coyotes use spaces based on how much human activity and human-based food are in these spaces.

4. We will test whether coyotes that eat more human food are bolder or more aggressive toward people. We will also investigate boldness and aggressiveness more generally in the coyote population. We will do this by testing the behaviour of individual coyotes and then examining how their behaviour relates to their diet. We will also ask whether coyotes may be learning bold or aggressive behaviours from watching other coyotes.

Our research will support coexistence with urban wildlife both locally and in other municipalities across Canada. The United Nations projects that nearly 70 percent of the world will live in urban areas by 2050, which means more and more people will be living alongside wildlife as urban areas expand into wildlife habitat. Wildlife species are also getting used to living in the city and living in close proximity to people. We are seeing a global increase in conflicts between humans and wildlife, and British Columbia is no exception. For example, coyote attacks on people and pets are now occurring more frequently in BC. Most notably, Stanley Park saw an unprecedented surge in attacks over a 10-month period in 2020-2021. These increases in coyote aggression towards people are made worse when people feed coyotes, as that helps coyotes to lose their fear of people and to get used to approaching people.

Surprisingly, despite living so closely to coyotes, we still have a lot to learn about what causes increases in urban coyote attacks on people, how coyotes live in urban spaces, whether they approach or avoid spaces that people use, what they eat, how healthy they are, and whether they learn from watching other coyotes. We also know very little about the coyotes that live in Vancouver. For example, we don’t know exactly how many coyotes live in the city or in our major parks, including Stanley Park. Additionally, when we see an escalation in attacks, it is often very difficult to know if it is one animal causing the attacks or many different individuals.

The goal for this project is to gather data on the coyotes living in Vancouver to help inform decisions on how to manage coyote populations here and in other jurisdictions. We are working closely with provincial and municipal governments to ensure that we collect useful data for these groups. This work will also be very relevant for our understanding and management of coyote populations across the lower mainland and throughout the rest of North America. The ultimate objective is to improve coexistence between people and coyotes throughout BC.

To achieve these goals, we need detailed data on individual coyotes. We cannot collect these data without marking and collaring the individual coyotes in the population. We utilize non-invasive methods whenever possible, including wildlife cameras and scat collection, but trapping, tagging, and collaring the coyotes is critical to be able to collect the fine-scale data that is necessary to really understand coyote behavior, movement, and response to humans.

Great strides have already been taken to help reduce conflict between coyotes and people in Vancouver. The feeding bylaw and the aversion condition program, which was developed collaboratively with the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation, scientific experts, and the Stanley Park Ecological Society (SPES), are both valuable efforts in this area.

Although there have not been any reports of aggressive coyotes in Stanley Park since the coyotes were removed, and SPES and the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation have done a lot of great work in educating people about coexistence with wildlife, further research into coyote behaviour and biology is vital for informing and supporting ongoing coexistence measures.

This study can provide more information to decision-makers to support targeted strategies for coexistence. Coyotes are likely to live in Vancouver for the foreseeable future and what we learn here can promote a healthy relationship with coyotes locally and in other municipalities.

The University of British Columbia Urban Wildlife Project will be using a suite of techniques to study coyotes living and traveling throughout Metro Vancouver, such as utilizing remote trail cameras and conducting scat surveys. While these methods provide us with crucial information, they do not provide us with the same level of detail on space use and other behaviors as GPS-collars do. For example, GPS collars are the best way to learn about things such as home range size, fine-scale habitat use, dispersal, activity patterns, and seasonal movements.

Having adult coyotes outfitted with GPS collars will be incredibly helpful if any coyotes start acting unusually. The location data we receive from the collars will also inform how much time individuals spend in locations where they might access anthropogenic food, such as near concessions. The location data will also tell us if the coyotes are avoiding people in space and time or if they are attracted to people in specific, potentially high-conflict locations. We will compare our coyote location data to the data on human park use that we receive from the trail counters that we will install throughout the study areas.

Ultimately, we are conducting this work to help us improve coexistence with wildlife in cities – hopefully, our work learning about the behaviour and ecology of these urban coyotes will help us live alongside these animals and share our spaces without conflict.

The risk to people, pets, and coyotes in the park is extremely low and we take every precaution to minimize risks wherever possible. This work will take place in remote areas using the safest and most humane methods available. Signs will be posted indicating research areas and our team will be able to respond to triggered traps within minutes.

The research team members are all highly experienced at working with urban carnivores and have all successfully trapped and collared urban carnivore species in the wild before. We are all passionate about animal welfare, and we take the welfare of all humans and animals potentially impacted very seriously. The project is designed to safeguard the well-being of coyotes and park users.

All required permits are in place. The project utilizes non-invasive observational methods whenever possible. The research team has worked with both UBC and provincial wildlife veterinarians to ensure that we are using the safest and most humane methods available. We are also working closely with professional trappers to ensure that trap placements and protocols are as effective and safe as possible.

We are using padded foothold traps, which are certified by the Agreement on International Humane Trapping Standards (AIHTS), and relaxing cable snares, which meet all recommended specifications of live capture cable restraints of the Fur Institute of Canada to minimize the risk of injury and stress to captured animals. These traps were explicitly chosen as they are the most humane traps on the market for wild canids, are equipped with safety features to minimize the risk of trap injuries and discomfort to the animals, and work well within the terrain of our urban parks. The research team will be able to respond to triggered traps within minutes.

We have designed our trapping methods to minimize captures and injuries of domestic dogs. We will only be trapping at night. All of our traps are located in an area where dogs are required to be on leash. Traps are placed far off of trails to reduce the chance that a dog steps into a trap. In the unlikely event that a dog is caught in one of our traps, we will have signs posted to show people how to release the dog from the trap. Our team will also arrive at the trap location within a few minutes to help the owner if they are having any trouble. Finally, we are using padded leg-hold traps that have been certified by the Agreement on International Humane Trapping Standards and that are unlikely to cause any injury to a trapped animal, so any dog that is trapped can be released quickly and unharmed.

GPS collars and VHF (Very High Frequency) radio collars allow researchers to identify the location of coyotes throughout the day and night without disturbing normal animal routines. Coyote locations are recorded as coordinates and entered into a Geographic Information System (GIS) in order to determine activity patterns, home ranges, territories, and habitat selection. Exact coordinates are kept confidential and are not shared with the broader public.

GPS collars for wildlife monitoring have been studied extensively and are designed to be incredibly lightweight and to have little to no impact on the health and behaviour of the animals wearing them. For coyotes specifically, there have been no indications of long-term, adverse effects of using tracking collars.

Collars will only be deployed if the collar weight is less than 5% of the animal's total body weight. The GPS collars weigh 342 grams which is less than 5% of the average total body weight of an adult coyote in the Pacific Northwest (between 9 and 14 kg).

The collar also has a drop-off function that releases the collar from the animal after 2 years. This is an important function as it means that the animal does not have to wear the collar after the battery is used.

That is something we very carefully consider, and it is why we closely follow advancements in technology. We use collars that have been designed and honed to fit the animals as well as possible. For each coyote that we collar, we take great care to ensure the collar fits properly. To do this, we measure two finger widths of space between the collar and the coyote's neck to ensure the collar is loose enough to ensure proper movement and accommodate increased fur in the winter but snug enough that it does not swing back and forth.

Any young coyotes that are captured are released without collars as these animals may grow to the point where the collar size is no longer appropriate. Likewise, if we capture a coyote in poor condition or with injuries, even small cuts in the neck area, we would also release it without collaring it.

A common misconception is that an animal with ear tags is a problem animal and that an animal with two ear tags was caught on two different occasions because it was causing problems. Actually, every adult coyote captured by our project will receive two ear tags (one in each ear). None of the coyotes captured by our project have been caught as problem animals but rather as part of our project to research Vancouver’s coyote population.

The primary reason is so that we can identify the coyotes if they don’t have collars or after the collar drops off. We put a tag in each ear in case 1 tag gets removed so that we get a photo of the ear tag regardless of what way a coyote passes a remote camera. By using remote cameras, we can read the ear tags of tagged coyotes if they do not have a collar. Ear tags will allow us to monitor animals through reported sightings from sources such as iNaturalist, wildlife managers, hunters, or other researchers. This also lets us understand where our coyotes disperse and settle down outside of our study areas.

We do not anticipate our research resulting in long-term impacts on the coyotes. Our research project procedures mirror those of coyote research initiatives across North America, with no evidence of long-term impacts on the study populations.