Andrew Smith runs most evenings along the Towpath Trail across from the Steelyards in Tremont, his neighborhood in Cleveland. Lately, he’s had company.
“[The first time] I saw the coyote I was a little nervous for a moment just running into this animal just so far from any accessible street if I needed to run away,” he said. “But it was so clearly more scared of me than I was of it that I was only nervous for a moment before the fear is gone.”
Smith said he watched the coyote peeing on light posts and trash cans, likely marking its territory to keep other coyotes away.
“You just see this large body with lots of fur or hair, just kind of a puffed-up body and the distinct grayish color that's so different from a dog,” Smith said. “It was very alert and just seemed to have a sharp focus for me.”
Behavior we can explain
Young coyotes are on the move this time of year, leaving their families to explore new territory and sometimes appearing in neighborhoods and parks in Northeast Ohio.
For Smith, seeing one was a thrill. But for many people, spotting a coyote sparks fear as they worry for their pets or themselves.
But the perception that coyotes are dangerous and after people and pets is based on misinformation, said Jon Cepek, a wildlife ecologist with the Cleveland Metroparks.
He’s studied urban coyotes for nearly two decades. When people report strange activity from a coyote in one of their parks, he’s the guy who shows up.
Today he’s walking a trail in southern Cuyahoga County. Several people on this busy trail reported a coyote barking at them, which is unusual.
“What we see is people off trail are much more likely to trigger a response from a coyote because it's trying to avoid us,” Cepek said. “Especially in smaller parks with not as much area to move, you have to give [coyotes] the space and time… If you really think about it, everything they do is explainable.”
In this case, Cepek suspects the barking coyote was likely protecting its pups from a human walking off the designated park trail, or fearful of a dog roaming off leash. Coyotes move at dusk or dawn to avoid people, so people using the parks during those hours can spook them too.
Conflicts with coyotes are rare, but when they do happen, Cepek said 99% of time they're human-driven. Some common triggers include aggressive domestic dogs, or unexpected encounters in backyards.
He said people often inadvertently invite coyotes onto their property by leaving out pet food, garbage or bird seed.
“Suburban and urban areas actually have more coyotes than many natural systems because of food people often don’t know they provided,” he said.
Coyotes are omnivores. Roughly 40% of their diet is small mammals, like mice and chipmunks. They’ll also eat crab apples, berries and garden vegetables.
And despite what people think, they’re not prowling for pets. Backyard chickens, on the other hand, are not as safe.
“Coyotes don’t hunt cats for food,” said Cepek. “But if a free-ranging cat is killing squirrels or chipmunks, the coyote sees it as competition.”
Filling the predator gap
Coyotes weren’t always here. Wolves and cougars were Ohio’s top predators until the 1800s. When humans drove them out, coyotes gradually filled the gap. Now they’re in all 88 of Ohio’s counties, and the state estimates their population is in the tens of thousands.
Stanley Gehrt, a professor of wildlife ecology at The Ohio State University, leads one of the largest urban coyote studies, focusing on Chicago.
“None of us anticipated coyotes moving into developed cities,” he said. “It’s this big natural experiment that coyotes have initiated.”
Gehrt said once coyotes became established in cities, they thrived — with an abundance of food and no predators. By contrast, in rural areas, food can be harder to find and coyotes can legally be trapped and hunted. In Ohio, there’s no coyote hunting season or bag limit, he said, and some contests even challenge people to kill as many as possible.
“Coyotes and wolves instill positive emotions in us, but also really strong negative emotions,” said Gehrt. “I don't understand the negative emotions, but it's powerful.”
Even so, most coyotes don’t make it past their first year, usually killed by cars. Gehrt said they aren’t a real threat to people.
“I can say that in 25 years of following and tracking the coyotes in [the Chicago] area, not only has there not been any fatalities due to coyotes, but there's never been a person bitten by a coyote,” Gehrt said. “And yet just in the last few years, there have been two people killed by deer.”
In Ohio, there are only two recorded cases of coyote bites to people. One of those bites was from an animal sick with rabies, which is exceedingly rare, Cepek said.
Coyotes can also carry parasites like heartworm or mange, but Gehrt said they’re rarely a danger to humans. In fact, they may quietly help public health by keeping deer populations in check, which reduces car collisions that can be fatal for people.
In Summit County, the Akron Zoo and Summit Metro Parks discovered that coyotes live along the zoo’s borders and have acted as a natural pest control, reducing the number of Canada geese, raccoons and skunks.
Summit County Metroparks biologist Marlo Perdicas said there have been no known problems with the coyotes being so close to the zoo. She’s amazed at how they’ve adapted to the area.
“They’re using the smallest scraps of natural space, little patches of trees along highways, even abandoned lots,” she said. “They really can make use of all of it.”
Cohabitating responsibly
Back on the suburban Cleveland trail, Cepek looked over one of his hidden wildlife cameras. It’s captured images of a family of coyotes moving at dusk. That family structure, he said, helps regulate their population.
Gehrt said if there are neighbor coyote packs nearby, the female senses their presence through scent and sound and will lower her litter size accordingly. If a coyote is killed, another quickly moves in to the territory.
Because of that, coyotes are not a species animal control can manage, Cepek said, aside from putting down an animal with a history of problematic behavior.
But he said it’s within people’s power to avoid conflicts. The best advice is to protect the boundary of wildlife.
“I always split this discussion into two things: your yard and their yard,” Cepek said. “So if I'm in my yard, I want to protect what I have. If I see a coyote, I'm gonna scare it away. But that's different when we're in an area that's not your yard, whether it's a park or green space or non-residential areas. That’s their yard and we need to respect that.”
He said the rules are simple: Stay on trails, leash your dogs and don’t feed wildlife.
Andrew Smith said he hopes his neighborhood changes its impression of the coyote he’s fondly named the Steelyard Coyote.
Seeing it reminds him that Cleveland, once scarred by urban pollution, is reclaiming its natural balance.
“Even in the Industrial Valley... it’s amazing there's enough wildlife there between the deer and the rabbits to actually support a multi-tiered or sophisticated ecosystem," he said.
