Wildlife expert advises Tybee on hazing coyote

Don't believe the Wile E. Coyote cartoons.


“If that were a real coyote it never would have fallen for those Acme products,” Lynsey White Dasher told about 40 Tybee residents gathered at the island’s gym Wednesday evening. “They're actually very smart.”

Dasher, an urban wildlife specialist with the Humane Society of the United States, maintains that the best way to deal with coyotes that become too bold around people, like some on Tybee, is a simple method that plays off the animals’ ability to learn: “Haze them,” she said.

“Wave your arms and yell, ‘Go away coyote.’ If that's too silly use a whistle or an air horn, or a sippy cup filled with pennies,” she said, producing each item for her hazing show-and-tell. A really bold coyote may need the hazer to run toward it before it runs away, but it always will, she said.

“The best part about it is everyone can haze a coyote,” Dasher said. “You don't have to be Animal Control or a coyote whisperer.”

The more people who do it, the more effective it is, with whole family groups of coyotes learning to avoid humans after just two or three encounters with people making themselves “loud and large.”

Tybee Islanders first started seeing a coyote in their beach community about a year ago. Police tried to unsuccessfully to catch him in traps. A professional trapper proved too expensive. The coyote singular turned out to be coyotes plural and continued to be sighted throughout the summer and fall. A few scuffles with local pets made some residents even more uneasy about sharing their island with the coyotes.

In January, the Tybee City Council authorized police to purchase a tranquilizer gun to remove them.

So far, police haven’t used it. Just days after that decision a coyote was found dead on the beach, shot through the chest. Earlier this month a police officer saw another coyote dead on the Bull River Bridge.

Dasher advised that removal is usually a waste of money as more coyotes move in to fill the empty territory left behind. In one study coyotes were killed at a rate of 61 to 75 percent of the population each year for seven years.

“Within eight months they were back to their pre-removal population,” she said.

Research indicates more females will breed, doing so more often and producing more pups per litter, if a female is removed from their family group.

Coyotes are all over, even in big cities like Chicago, Dasher said, though most are rarely seen. (The Windy City coyotes are caught regularly on traffic cameras crossing intersections late at night; Dasher also showed a photo of one famous coyote bedded down in an open front beverage cooler of a Chicago Quiznos. He wandered in an open door.) They become a nuisance when they lose their fear of humans because people make pet food, garbage or other easy meals readily available. Dasher's research indicates fewer than ten people a year are bitten by coyotes in the U.S. One of those happened at a McDonald's in Colorado where a customer was nipped in her car. Staffers had been feeding coyotes french fries at the drive-through window.

“She didn't know she was supposed to feed the coyote french fries and it bit her,” Dasher said.

Coyotes don’t typically attack dogs or cats, either, she said. Owners can reduce those interactions even further by keeping dogs on a leash and keeping cats indoors.

Residents in attendance told of encountering coyotes and noted that four pups had recently been seen. Most in the audience were enthusiastic about hazing.

Even after the seminar, though, City Council member Bill Garbett wasn't convinced hazing alone would do the job.

“We’re going to have to look at a combination of ways,” said Garbett, who was instrumental in raising the issue of the tranquilizer gun.

Dasher, whose organization did not charge for her presentation but to which Tybee donated $500, politely disagreed.

“That’s not what we’ve found to be effective,” she said.


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