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One of the nice things we talk about coyotes in this area
is the coyotes that live in the Chicago region
are the most studied coyotes in the world.
They've been looked at scientifically for the last 16 years.
An extraordinary amount of information that the researchers
have learned about the coyotes that live around here,
except anytime you're dealing with science --
and that's what we talk about is science -- things do change.
Science changes.
It's not a probable science, it's what science is.
So information you might have learned 20 years ago about coyotes
may not be true now.
Information that you're going to learn today...20 years from now,
50 years from now may not be true anymore.
So if something I tell you this morning
you find out 50 years from now is not true, contact me.
Look me up.
We'll go out for a beer and discuss it.
Real quickly, a little bit about identification of coyotes.
They're a medium-sized predator.
The weight is a little bit deceptive.
I think a lot of wild animals,
people look at and assume they're going to be bigger than they are.
But coyotes are about four-feet long.
They weigh 25-35 pounds.
They're about 20-inches at the shoulder.
They're not big animals.
There's one standing nicely right here in front of me.
A dog that size, a pet dog that size usually weighs
a lot more than a coyote does.
If you think about athletes,
cross-country runners versus offensive linemen,
they may both be 6'3" but one weighs a lot less than the other.
Coyotes are not heavy animals at all.
They're common throughout Illinois, most of the United States.
That's wrong.
They're common everywhere in the United States now.
Sometimes their ranges are 20-30 miles in diameter.
They like to den in hollow trees, logs, brush piles.
That's where they make their den.
They don't live in the den year-round.
The den is only a place for the family to raise their young.
In Illinois packs are uncommon.
The word "pack" is misleading. They're families.
That's what they live in.
When you're talking about wolves,
wolves are a social creature that live in extended families:
grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, then nieces, nephews,
parents and their young.
Coyotes live with the family:
mom, dad, and the young and that's all.
They're good swimmers, they're extremely fast.
Mostly active from dusk till early morning hours
but they can be seen any time of day; 3 in the afternoon.
There's maybe nothing wrong with the coyote,
he just wants to be moving around in the middle of the day.
So, if you see a coyote in the afternoon,
don't assume that it's sick or injured,
he's just doing something that most other coyotes don't do.
They reach *** maturity at a year or two years.
Usually, two months gestation.
Right now, usually mid-February is their breeding season.
The number of young they have
is determined by how much food is available.
Only five to 20% of coyote pups survive their first year.
In other words,
sometimes 80% to 90% of coyotes born
won't see their first birthday.
Young or helpless and blind at birth,
they stay in the den for three weeks with mom.
When they're a couple months old they start moving out
into their neighborhood.
Usually in the fall or early winters the males need to disperse
and find a place to live on their own.
One thing that research has shown us
is that they disperse in all directions:
north, south, east and west.
Some disperse far away.
Some stay close.
Some move far away and then come back.
So, just again shows that when we're starving the coyotes,
there's no set pattern to what they do when they're dispersing.
They eat, they're omnivorous, they're considered carnivores.
They usually eat small mammals and small birds, bird eggs,
but they'll eat anything that's available.
They're very opportunistic hunters.
One nice thing about the coyotes that live around here,
they tend to eat natural food, what they should be eating.
When you go to other parts of the country,
you'll find coyotes eat more human-associated food:
garbage and such, pets.
Depends on the location and season,
what they're eating, voles, the little mammals,
little rodents, huge part of their diet; rabbits,
deer at a certain time of the year.
A coyote can actually catch a fawn for only a couple of weeks,
after that a fawn is able to outrun a coyote.
A three-week-old fawn can pretty much outrun a coyote.
But that period when they can't run that fast,
then they're in danger of being predated by coyotes.
Housecats, 0% to 7%.
Plants, 8% to 45%.
That 45% usually happens in late summer,
early fall when there's a lot of fruit on the ground.
They love to eat mulberries.
They love to eat crabapples.
This is a nice thing for people who aren't real fond of geese.
Coyotes depredate more than 40% of goose nests.
They can walk away with the eggs.
They'll go after the young.
In the spring they take a lot of deer.
Yearly routine, January through March is mating season.
Around here it coincides with Valentine's Day.
So it's nice to remember.
The pups are born usually around the end of April into May.
They stay with their family through September.
The young start dispersing in September
and some actually will stay with mom and dad into the winter.
They communicate with other coyotes a lot.
The howls are famous.
They announce territory, they're trying to attract,
they're communicating, that's what they're doing.
Don't believe the myth that coyotes howl to celebrate their kill.
They don't.
They sound playful at times;
the yips, the barks, the huffing, they use sense.
They use their poo as communication.
They like to defecate in the middle of trails.
Most people walking their dogs in the forest preserve
have the courtesy
to let their dogs go to the bathroom off the trail.
Coyotes don't show that courtesy,
They like to defecate usually in the middle of intersections.
Their poo is very familiar.
It's a lot of hair in it.
The facial expressions of a coyote range
just like your pet dogs at home.
You can tell when they're happy.
You can tell when they're sad.
You can tell when they feel guilty.
Pup survival over a 12-month period,
when they're born they're all around.
By the end of the year,
very few coyotes from that litter are still around.
Mortality: road kills.
There are not a lot of predators out there for coyotes around the year.
History of the coyotes:
They were here in the 1940s, the 1950s.
They were here in the 1840s and 1850s.
Lake County had a bounty on coyotes in the 1840s and 1850s.
During the '60s and '70s, the sightings increased.
In the 1980s they were well established almost everywhere.
If you live within half-a-mile
or three-quarters of a mile of forest preserve, or a golf course,
park district, railroad tracks, a creek,
live industry, healthy neighborhoods, cemeteries,
you're in coyote habitat.
They're across the state.
Current distribution, across the continent.
They adapt well.
There's no animal in North American history
that they have tried to eradicate with the efforts
that they put forth to eradicate coyotes.
It's failed.
There are more coyotes now than ever before.
This middle statement,
"Considered one of the most intelligent mammals
in North America."
In Willowbrook,
we don't usually use the words "smart" or "dumb,"
but coyotes are highly adaptable.
They learn.
They learn what they can get away with.
They learn what they can't get away with and they don't do that again.
They're amazingly adaptable animals.
And they can utilize nearly every kind of suburban habitat
including Michigan Avenue.
This is the coyote that went in the Quiznos store a few years ago.
That's him in the cooler.
Beautiful shot.
A scared little coyote who wanted to cool off
by climbing into the SoBe drink cooler at the Quiznos.
Here's a coyote that wandered onto a city bus
and curled up in the front seat.
They're in our backyards.
They drink out of water fountains.
There's one in an elevator.
They're in culverts.
This shows the increase in complaints about nuisance coyotes
from 1990 till a couple years ago.
Does this mean there are more coyotes over this 10-year period
or was there more public awareness of coyotes over this 10-year period?
I don't want to blame media for anything.
Media reports stuff.
But when the media reports an encounter with a coyote,
other people tend to contact newspapers and say,
"I've had that, too."
One of the things about media
is they tend to look at sensational stories.
Any time you can put the word "attack" into a story,
it's going to be sensational.
So when we hear about coyote attacks,
the word "attack" is usually a red flag for us.
Coyotes don't attack.
They do approach.
Coyotes are very curious animals.
They're always looking to see what they can get away with.
If they can go into your backyard and eat a little bit of dog food,
without anything negative happening to them,
they'll remember that and they'll come back.
If they go into a backyard
and something negative happens to them,
they'll remember that
and they won't venture into your backyard as readily.
It is highly seasonal, the number of calls we get.
This pattern repeats itself year after year after year.
The calls increase in the late fall when the young are dispersing.
There are more coyotes out there because the young are dispersing.
If you look at June and July,
there are very few calls about coyotes
because they don't want to be conspicuous.
This is when they have the young in the neighborhood around their den
and they don't want to be seen.
But they have to disperse eventually.
Interactions with other dogs.
Coyotes like to approach.
They're curious.
They like to approach other animals
and just sort of see what's going on.
Sometimes it's curiosity, sometimes it's trying to establish their territory,
sometimes it's aggressive.
Sometimes coyotes will go after little dogs
or big dogs if they think that they're a threat.
Then there's also nonaggressive.
There are YouTube videos of a coyote and a golden retriever
separated by a chain-link fence.
They approach, they touch noses and they run up and down
the length of the fence wagging their tails, bowing their heads down.
There's no other word for it except they are playing together.
Other times coyotes chase dogs.
Other times dogs chase coyotes.
Herrick Lake, there was a coyote one day after a small dog.
The gentlemen there
would take his dog to the back areas of Herrick Lake
and let it off the leash to play with his girlfriend.
Then the coyote didn't like that after a while.
Springbrook, East Branch.
This is actually an old slide because we have encounters with coyotes
in every single forest preserve we have now, not just these.
Pet owner responsibilities.
This is the most important thing for the public.
Watch your pets.
Don't let them out.
I don't think it's legal to allow cats to run free in DuPage County.
I'm searching to see if there's anyone nodding at that.
Good.
Cats are in danger of being taken out by coyotes
if they're running loose.
Dogs should always be on a leash or supervised in your yard.
Coyote attacks on pets appear to be on the rise.
They hit the newspapers.
They hit the television news.
We know when there are coyote attacks
and since it is considered an attack when your pet gets chased,
that's the kind of thing that the media likes to report.
Human perception: fear and loathing.
There are people who are scared of wild animals.
We see it in cartoons.
We've seen on television.
I've seen my wife do it.
She gets on the table if there's a mouse in the kitchen.
She's terrified of little animals.
If it's a big animal, you're even more scared.
We can't tell people don't be scared.
I don't like the thought that fear is based in ignorance
because a lot of times it's not.
You can be extremely smart but there are things that scare you
and there's no amount of education
that's going to get you over that fear.
There are phobias.
Again, you guys are law enforcement.
You know human behavior probably better than most people.
You have to understand what fear does to people.
It makes them exaggerate, makes them not remember,
maybe not recollect some things as accurately.
The worse thing a coyote is guilty of is being seen.
Out of sight, out of mind is a very nice thing.
Sensationalism; it reported increased concern.
That's just human nature, too.
If you see something and it's on the news and then you notice it,
you think that's newsworthy as well.
We live in a society that's detached
and lacks understanding of the natural world.
That's why we have these programs.
That's why we try and educate people about wild animals.
This slide, it's a few years old now.
Coyotes, though, they do bite people.
Most of the time bites aren't out of the blue.
It's after people have been feeding coyotes.
A few years ago in Wheaton there was a concern about coyotes
becoming aggressive and killing dogs and they hired a trapper
and that trapper caught five coyotes.
Three of those coyotes had human-associated food:
vegetables, dog food, cat food and bread in them.
They were being fed.
Don't feed coyotes and you won't have coyotes coming
into your backyards and potentially bothering your children or your pets.
I don't know if you can see this from the back.
There are very few dots of where coyote distribution
and coyote attacks but now this is ten years old.
California.
Why does California have more coyote attacks?
They might have more coyotes but they also feed them.
The people in California have a bad habit of feeding wildlife
more than most other states.
Attack, again, we want to look at the word "attack."
Are they just investigating?
Are they going up and sniffing?
Are they trying to run past a person?
An attack is going up and biting something.
Most of these are not going up and biting something.
Interesting photograph from Carol Stream
where these little kids are looking at a coyote den.
There's always a split down the middle.
Some people look at this and they think
how lucky those kids are to be able to observe nature.
Other people look at this and say,
"This is one of the scariest images I can imagine.00:17:15.633,00:17:17.967 because where are the parents?"
Well, a parent is probably holding the camera.
Coyotes have been studied throughout Cook County.
Those yellow bars show on top of the Forest Preserve.
I think Busse Woods and Max McGraw Wildlife,
those are the studies shows how coyotes move through their areas.
Each blue dot is a tag on where a coyote wearing a collar was marked.
Now you can see those areas where the heavy concentration is.
Those are the study areas.
If you could tag every coyote in this area,
the entire slide would be blue.
Solitary coyotes have a much larger range.
They are dispersing the family groups.
The families stay together in little tight territories.
I don't know if you can see these circles
but there's very little overlap with the families.
They live in proximity to other coyote families.
The individual male is dispersing, they'll cross anywhere.
They use all kinds of habitat:
open habitat, residential, commercial.
They can be found anywhere.
This is Woodfield and those green dots are around the Ikea
and the Ikea parking lot and the Ikea retention pond.
This coyote lives at Woodfield.
There's the retention pond.
Again, seasonal dispersal patterns, I think we talked about this.
What they're doing at different times of the year.
Again, they go north, south, east and west.
Some go far, some stay close.
Some go far and then return.
Laws about 7,000 to 9,000 coyotes are trapped or hunted each year.
Trapping season is restricted in the fall and the winter.
Hunting is open year round.
There's a three-month period
where you can hunt coyotes 24-hours-a-day.
You can use any caliber of handgun.
You can use rifles, you can use shotgun,
you can use semi-automatic rifles with large magazine clips.
You can call them in electronically.
You can use spotlights on them.
That's for a three-month period of the year.
The rest of the year you can only shoot coyotes
half-hour between sunup and half-hour after sundown.
You can hunt coyotes every day of the year in Illinois.
Leash laws: you can't let your dog or other animal
leave the premises of its owner but not the owner's control.
DuPage County dogs cannot run loose.
The forest preserve, every dog has to be on a leash
unless you're in one of the dog areas.
Nearly all open spaces are used by coyotes.
I wouldn't even use the word "nearly."
I think all open spaces are utilized by coyotes.
There are some areas they like more than others.
Large scale movements
have important implications for management.
One of the thoughts is if there are nuisance coyotes you track them
and take them far away and they're out of sight.
They'll try and come back.
Peaceful existence occurs every day.
There are coyotes living within a half a mile of every one of us.
Removal is temporary.
You take it far away, they'll come back.
Tracking and removal.
This illustrates adaptability of coyotes.
The Texas study here was in Harris County.
Houston is in Harris County.
They had a 10-year project to eradicate the coyotes.
They were going to spend a million dollars over a ten-year period.
At the end of the 10-year period,
there were more coyotes than when they started.
Removal: it treats a symptom, it's not a cure.
When you try to remove coyotes, you will end up with more coyotes.
Poorly documented but a coexistence occurs every day.
Various coyotes everywhere.
Management should focus on public education, that's why we're here.
That's why Willowbrook exists.
If you guys have any questions, we're there seven days a week.
Ask us.
We'll go out and we talk to garden clubs, Kiwanis Clubs, Rotary Clubs,
law enforcement groups, library programs, city programs,
we'll talk about coyotes to anybody.
As part of our community outreach
there's no charge for programs on coyotes.
One of the positive aspects is they're good at rodent control,
they're good at goose control.
They are predators of overabundant species.
They're the top predators in Illinois.
To have a healthy ecosystem, you need predators.
You need every step of the food chain.
Put things in perspective.
If we lived out west, people would be concerned about bears.
If we lived in Wyoming,
people might be concerned about wolves.
If we lived in northern Wisconsin,
people might be concerned about wolves.
If we lived in the Black Hills,
people might be concerned about mountain lions.
Here we have coyotes.
Avoiding problems in the early winter through spring:
they're mating, they're caring for their young,
they're less tolerant of interlopers in their territory.
They will chase dogs away from what they consider their territory.
Coyotes may perceive a wandering dog
as a threat and become defensive.
A leash keeps your dog by your side and out of trouble.
Three-million people a year are bitten
in the United States by domestic dogs.
A thousand dog bites in DuPage County.
Fewer than a hundred coyote bites in a 30-year period in North America.
So we're trying to put things into perspective.
No coyote bites have occurred in DuPage County.
When a supposed coyote bite or attack occurs,
it hits the newspaper.
When it's proven that it probably wasn't a coyote,
that usually does not hit the newspaper.
There was a man a couple of years ago in Aurora,
said he was bit in his backyard by a coyote,
proved that was a domestic animal, not a coyote.
That story didn't hit the paper.
This recent incident in Riverside where the guy said
the coyotes were throwing themselves at the glass in the door
trying to break in, nobody really believes that.
But again, it made the newspaper.
It made the news.
Our activities influence coyotes' natural fear.
It behooves us as humans to try and get coyotes
so they are not so comfortable around us.
They're always trying to see what they can get away with.
We want to make sure they don't get away with anything.
We don't want them coming onto our porches.
We don't want them going after our pets.
Rule number one:
Discourage close encounters; make them feel unwelcome.
You can clap your hands, you can open umbrellas,
you can shake garbage bags at them.
Do something that they don't expect, you'll scare them away.
That's what we need to do, get them scared of us.
While aggressive displays toward people
are not considered normal coyote behavior,
it is important to note that coyotes will become comfortable
around humans if we let them!
We shouldn't let them.
Do not approach or capture a coyote.
Do not feed coyotes intentionally or unintentionally.
Every time I talk to groups,
now after I've talked a while about coyotes and I'll ask people,
"Does anyone ever put food
out in the backyard for wild animals and see what comes up?"
Nobody raises their hand.
But when I start talking about this and, in a very conversational way,
say, "Has anybody ever put food out in the backyard
and see what comes up to it," hands go up.
Stop that practice.
Keep garbage inside.
Keep the grills and barbecues clean.
It's amazing what comes up to your grills
in the middle of the night.
Clean under your bird feeders.
Bird seed attracts rodents, possums,
raccoons, those will attract the predators.
Keep your dogs leashed.
Be a responsible pet owner.
Supervise them as you would a child.
Some people like to leave brush piles
and tall grass in the yard to attract wildlife.
If you don't want to attract wildlife,
don't keep brush piles in your yard and keep your grass trimmed.
Stand your ground.
Don't run.
It's not "don't run" because it's going
to chase you down and grab you,
it's because we want to make that coyote aware of his place.
Face the coyote, yell at it, show dominance.
Clap your hands.
Blow a whistle.
Boat horns, air horns, anything like that.
Wave your arms.
People have asked, "What about pepper spray?
What about mace?"
Sure, why not?
If it makes you comfortable to carry that, go ahead.
Just be careful that you're downwind and not upwind when you spray it.
Any wild animal demands respect.
Raccoons, possums, mice, hawks, owls;
you have to respect that animal.
Keep a safe distance.
Teach your children to do the same.
One of the things we're always telling kids is,
"If you can walk up to a wild animal, there's something wrong with it."
Don't. Don't walk up to a squirrel.
Don't walk up to a bunny.
Don't walk up to a coyote or a goose.
If you can approach it,
there's probably something wrong with it.
Wild animals are supposed to try and get away from us.
Even the coyotes.
Don't approach them.
Coyotes or wolves, we don't have to worry about the wolves so much.
We don't have a population of wolves in Illinois.
We do have a lot of coyotes.
This kind of thing is certainly available on almost every website.
And acknowledgements.
There are a lot of people who have bought into this research.
Cook County Forest Preserve has taken the lead.
Dr. Stan Gehrt from Ohio State University
certainly is the... probably the world's expert on urban coyotes now.
Then there's a lot of other people involved here:
Dan Thompson, Rob Erickson, people at Brookfield Zoo,
McMcGraw Wildlife and DuPage County Forest Preserve.