 For the first two years they’re going to just kill as many deer as they can, regardless of gender. Then they’ll switch to killing 3 does to every 2 bucks. Killing bucks doesn’t really do anything to the population; one buck will mate with many does. They could kill a lot fewer animals if they would lean more heavily on the does–and right from the start. Keep reading Coyotes Couldn’t Control Valley Forge Wolves, Critics Say. Tell that to Yellowstone Elk  The Hallett preserve has been off-limits to the public since 1934 as a bird sanctuary. But the Central Park Conservancy offers a handful of half hour tours every year or so and I got to go on one today. Keep reading Central Park Opens Secret Sanctuary for 30 Minutes  The Hallett Nature Sanctuary on Central Park South been in the news this month as the daytime napping place of at least one coyote/coywolf. This four-acre island of nature is normally almost invisible to park goers, even though it’s in the most popular corner of Central Park. When the park was created this whole area was a big, smelly swamp known to carry malaria. The New York Times describes how the wealthy residents of 5th Avenue finally fixed the problem of stagnant water in their cellars. Frederick Law Olmstead drained the swamp and created the Pond, with a promintory left natural. The pond was popular for “swan velocipede boats.” An 1887 Times story says the boats “got no rest from morning to night,” as a quarter million people visited the park on the first day of spring, watched a black swan protect her nest on a rock in the Pond and observed only two prairie dogs emerge, “the most certain sign of warm weather.” In the winter the crowds headed to the pond for ice skating. Trolleys used to wear a signal red ball if it was currently frozen enough to skate. The current Wollman Rink is built over a filled in section of the pond. The preserve area has been off limits to regular New Yorkers since 1934, when it was named the Bird Sanctuary. In 1952 the Times reported: “59TH ST. PARK LAKE TO BE RID OF FILTH; Complaints of Offensive Debris Bring Admission of ‘Laxity.” Keep reading Secrets of the Hallett in Central Park  Update: 1010 Wins has amazing video of the coyote giving cops the slip around 23rd Street around 3 a.m. last night. That means he headed south instead of his usual north. Cops chased him–while someone shouted Let him go! Let him go! Then he was spotted heading back up to 57th Street, probably the Hallett Nature Preserve, where he’s been sleeping in Central Park. The coyote (really a coywolf) continues to prowl around Central Park, despite what he hear are efforts to trap and euthanize him. I went up to Central Park last night to catch a glimpse. I got nothing. But Bruce Yolton tracked him out of the Hallett Nature Preserve, where he sleeps during the day, and through a circuitous path of the lower park, avoiding people. I called the Department of Environmental Conservation, but so far haven’t heard back about their plans. The state DEC is trying to capture the coyote and euthanize him to test for rabies, which is infecting raccoons in the northern part of the park, one wildlife rehabilitator told us. Killing an animal is the only sure way to find out quickly whether it has rabies. Or you could just wait and see if he gets sick. This rehabber is qualified to take the coyote in for a quarantine period (10 days) so he wouldn’t have to be killed, but so far the DEC hasn’t given the okay. If someone just so happens to catch the coyote and bring it to Keep reading Is the Noose Closing on the Central Park Coyote?  The coyote that’s been living discreetly in Central Park for the last month is now on wildlife officials‘ hitlist. Fearing rabies, the Department of Environmental Conservation is trying to trap the coyote and euthanize it, wildlife rehabilitators familiar with the case say. That’s too bad because local rehabbers have offered an alternative: They’re willing to put the coyote in the standard 10-day quarantine, then find a suitable release site outside the city. In the past, the DEC has trapped coyotes and at least made an effort to release them. (Hal, the 2006 coyote, died from stress, rat poison and heartworm, according to the necropsy.) What’s different this time is there is widespread rabies in the raccoon population in upper Manhattan, especially the north woods of Central Park, where the coyote trots after spending the day sleeping in the isolated Hallett Nature Preserve near 57th Street and 6th Avenue. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLZdBVZhOrA&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01]These animals aren’t exactly making a reappearance in Manhattan after being vanquished for centuries. They are a slightly different species than ever lived here before; they aren’t really coyotes, which live out west, but coywolves–a hybrid of versatile, small western coyotes and the gray wolves that were hunted out of the east. Jon Way, a biologist at Eastern Coyote Research, is pushing for them to be classified as a native species since they weren’t introduced by humans and are the natural product of canines evolving to survive in the habitat altered by humans. Coywolves are now established across the eastern U.S., Keep reading Central Park Coyote Faces Death Despite Offer of Reprieve  Coywolf Hill,This is the kind of distant, lousy glimpse of the Central Park Coywolf you’ll get after much effort.In other words, he’s not bothering anyone. To see much better pictures, check out Urban Hawks. Last night I got to see a coywolf in Central Park. I went at dusk to see the coyote Bruce Yolton has been tracking at urbanhawks. After an hour of walking in the slush around the pond near 57th Street, I got to see him or her for a few minutes. So, it’s not as if he’s marauding joggers or stealing hot dogs from vendors. But the big question is whether somebody’s going to panic and demand his capture. Or really, knowing New York, when. As Yolton has pointed out on Urban Hawks, his excellent photoblog of NYC wildlife, the coyote seems to be sleeping during the day in the Hallett Nature Sanctuary, the only part of the park off limits to people and dogs, which is surrounded by water and fence. Once again, I didn’t have to be a good enough spotter to see the coyote in the dark, just good enough to see Yolton with his massive lens and tripod. The coyote lurked by the pond edge, then headed back up the sanctuary’s hill, where he could have been seen by anybody on 57th Street. Then he gave us the slip. He’s been spotted in the north end of the park, too. This coywolf, or perhaps others, have been spotted in Manhattan all Keep reading Central Park’s Elusive Coywolf 
Wildlife photographer Bruce Yolton, who runs the Urban Hawks blog, shot a video Monday night of a coyote (well, really a coywolf) playing hockey with an empty bottle on the pond near the southeast corner of Central Park. That’s right, the coyote coyote who was up at Columbia University earlier this month maybe went further south in the park, right on the edge of midtown and the Plaza Hotel. You can see the coyote lick the bottle, as if hoping for a last drop of food. And he’s close enough to the street that you can see emergency lights flashing on the ice. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLZdBVZhOrA&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01] Yolton is known for stalking the park at all hours and getting incredible wildlife shots–often keeping them secret for months so he doesn’t attract crowds that disturb wildlife. He’d reported in early February that a coyote was in the park. He thinks this coyote may have discovered the peninsula that sticks out into the pond and is a preserve. Often when a species is off wandering on its own, it’s a young male looking for new territory. In March 2006 another young male coyote made a media spectacle of himself in Central Park; one year old Hal was finally caught, then died in captivity from a combination of stress, heartworm and rat poison. Let’s hope this one quietly makes it back to the Bronx. Where to See Wolves and Coywolves How You Can See Wild Animals Even in New York City To see more Keep reading Coyote Filmed Playing Ice Hockey With Bottle in Central Park 
Three coyotes were spotted trotting around Columbia University in upper Manhattan this past week. The Ivy League university put out a public safety warning for all students to be on the lookout for the canines. DNAinfo says these sightings were Wednesday; Gawker puts it at Sunday. Three animals identified as coyotes were observed in front of Lewisohn Hall [116th Street and Broadway] this morning, 911 was contacted and NYPD responded. NYPD spotted one of the animals and confirmed it was a coyote. The one coyote that was seen by NYPD and CUPS went behind the CEPSR build and it is believed exited the campus.An additional sighting by CU facilities was called in approximately 10:00 AM this morning but was not confirmed. All members of the community are advised not to approach these animals. There’s a bit of a breathless freak-out online, but many New Yorkers have been wiser, pointing out they could help with the rat and pigeon problems. They’ll figure it out and go back to New Jersey or Westchester or wherever they’re from. (Columbia is within a mile or two of five smaller bridges to the Bronx.) They must be pretty unobtrusive to have made it all the way to Columbia–through some of the most densely populated areas in the country–without anybody noticing. As a wildlife rehabber, I sometimes get calls from New Yorkers about raccoons. The raccoons aren’t in distress; people just assume they must be in some kind of trouble to end up Keep reading Coyotes Trot Around Columbia University; Panic Ensues  My family in Illinois shares theories and gossip about the resident coyotes. Living in New York, I miss out. So I wanted to contribute to the family pastime when I visited over Christmas. The new tools this year: a game camera and Suburban Howls from John Way of the Eastern Coyote Research. The camera is great to see what’s going on at night, but Way’s book was exactly what we need to figure out what was going on. My sister Mary Ann has been tracking these coyotes–really coywolfs–the longest. Like many animal-watchers, she gives them names based on their appearance or behavior, such as Fluffy, with the thick coat. Fluffy had pups this spring and in the fall a friend found the den in a thicket. Last year I got Mary Ann a motion-activated camera designed for hunters, which she more or less ignored. Ok, she claims to have put it out but got nothing but raccoon pictures. We could see in the snow that two compost mounds were clearly high-value real estate in coyote-world. They had tons of tracks and pee. We set the camera there and got a picture the first night. But without some knowledge of coyote world, we didn’t know how to explain what was going on. That’s where we really need Suburban Howls. Way does a great job of synthesizing the body of knowledge on eastern coyotes or coywolves and describing his own research and findings. We had theorized the coywolves liked the mounds Keep reading Enjoying Your Local Coyotes (or Coywolves)  You can spend thousands of dollars watching wolves in Yellowstone or $50 – $200 to get a much closer and scientific view of the new canine species that is replacing the wolf: the coywolf. And if you’ll have trouble getting to Cape Cod by dusk or dawn, you can even stay in the house of wildlife biologist Dr. Jon Way so he can take you out to see the animal he studies. Way can take you along for field work when he’s using his radio collars to track the animals that are laregely taking on the role of predator across the east, where the wolf was wiped out. He describes his accomodations as “rustic casual:” you sleep in the basement and eat with his family. But the real attraction is the coywolf and Way, one of its strongest advocates. He is pushing to change the way the coywolf is classified and treated. Some state wildlife agencies (in the mid-Atlantic) have been treating these coywolves, which are conspicuously larger than western coyotes, simply as an invasive species from the west. They appeared after the wolf was wiped out. Invasive (as opposed to native) means they don’t belong and were introduced by humans. The invasive designation means about the only management these new coyotes get is hunting by the federal government through its controversial Wildlife Services agency. Even in states where it’s not labeled invastive, there’s no bag limit and long hunting seasons–something Way wants to change. “We should not be Keep reading Meet the Coywolf, the New Canine Predator of North America |
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