NDN Article: Coyotes on Aquidneck Island

By Sean Flynn/Daily News staff

NDN online 4.12.07

NEWPORT - Patricia Presnall saw a coyote running through a courtyard at DeLaSalle condominiums on Bellevue Avenue this week, just a short distance from where two gardeners were working.

Last week, she saw a coyote on Annandale Road, near Memorial Boulevard; the week before that, she saw one on the lawn of a Narragansett Avenue estate, near Forty Steps.

"If they just ate rats and squirrels, I'd be all for them," she said. "But if I had little children or a pet, I'd be nervous."

Presnall is like a lot of residents who are no longer comfortable with the number of coyote sightings on Aquidneck Island, community leaders say.

Newport City Manager Edward F. Lavallee, Middletown Town Administrator Gerald S. Kempen and Portsmouth Town Administrator Robert G. Driscoll agreed Wednesday to develop a plan to decrease and control the coyote population. Among the ideas they talked about is hiring a professional trapper to catch coyotes with leg traps and euthanize them. However, Lavallee said it may be difficult to receive state permits to do that.

The administrators also talked about asking the state Department of Transportation not to dump road kill, especially deer carcasses, in the woods. Lavallee would like the state to locate a facility where carcasses can be incinerated.

Finally, the officials want people on the island not to leave food outside for dogs or feral cats and not to store garbage in places or receptacles that are accessible to coyotes. There have been reports of people directly feeding coyotes, a bad practice officials say habituates coyotes to the presence of humans and trains them to seek food from humans.

"Island residents are afraid of coyotes," Driscoll said.

"I think we should take aggressive action to restrict and control the population," Lavallee said.

Lavallee, Kempen and Driscoll made the decision to work on a regional plan early Wednesday after meeting with Charles Brown, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Environmental Management's Division of Fish and Wildlife, and Numi Mitchell, the lead scientist in the Conservation Agency's Narragansett Bay Coyote Study.

For the past two years, Mitchell has been trapping coyotes, tagging them with radio transmitters, and releasing them to follow their movements and monitor their behavior.

The radio tracks show there are distinct packs with their own territories on Aquidneck and Conanicut islands.

Mitchell said she knows of six packs on Aquidneck Island and four packs on Conanicut Island. She said there are five to 10 coyotes in each pack, so that would put the total number of coyotes on the two islands somewhere between 50 and 100. She said there is a lot of uncertainty about total numbers because packs sometimes subdivide and the population fluctuates.

When the radio tracks show a coyote hanging around a spot for a long time, there usually is a carcass there, Mitchell said. There are about 1,000 deer killed on roads annually in the state, Mitchell said, and the DOT has told her carcasses are dumped in the woods. That has to stop, she said.

Farmers should bury or dispose of livestock carcasses as well, perhaps by having them incinerated, she said.

"When we lower their food resources, they decrease their litters," Mitchell said.

How many coyotes could be tolerated on the islands?

"If they stay in the woods and you don't see them, that's the right number," Lavallee said.

Population control

Brown and Mitchell said that simply killing coyotes is not a solution because litters of pups are born each year. If there is an open territory, the pups will move into the area and establish themselves there. If land is occupied, they try to survive in fringe areas, but many die. Brown said the oldest coyote he has found in the state was 7 years old. Most, he said, live only two or three years.

Brown said that even if the communities were successful in eliminating 60 percent of the coyotes one year, the effort would have be maintained to remove at least 60 percent each year. They regenerate their population quickly with pups who have a better survival rate as territory opens up, he said.

Kempen cited a study conducted in Vancouver, Canada, that determined trapping and killing coyotes is not an effective method of population control.

Present at the meeting in council chamber were City Council members Kathryn E. Leonard, Stephen R. Coyne, Justin McLaughlin, Mary C. Connolly and Jeanne-Marie Napolitano; Portsmouth Town Council members William E. West and Hubert E. "Huck" Little; and Middletown animal control officer Joseph G. Nunes Jr.

Leonard and Coyne sponsored a resolution that was passed unanimously by the Newport City Council Wednesday night calling on Newport, Middletown and Portsmouth to develop a "Regional Population Control Plan for Coyotes on Aquidneck Island." Lavallee said he would like to include Jamestown in the planning as well.

The Newport council asked Lavallee to present them with a recommended plan by Oct. 10.

Leonard said she received at least 30 calls over the past two days from people who are concerned about coyotes in residential neighborhoods.

Mitchell said a female coyote that lives someplace near Bellevue Avenue gave birth to a litter recently. These coyotes could be going out daily, foraging and returning to their home.

"The coyotes are going back and forth to the den," Brown said. "Fifty people could be seeing them and calling in reports. That doesn't mean there are 50 coyotes. The people are seeing the same coyotes."

Presnall said a neighbor at DeLaSalle saw a coyote outside her front door. She told Presnall the coyote appeared to have delivered a litter recently because its nipples were large and hanging. The neighbor made loud noises and the coyote ran away.

Brown and Mitchell said that is a good strategy with coyotes. They are frightened off by loud noises.

Brown said he has examined the stomach contents of 85 coyotes and found the remains of small mammals, road kill, pet food and garbage.

"There is pretty much nothing they won't eat," he said. "They are the top predators in the state. They have filled the niche previously filled by wolves."

Brown said coyotes will not go into box or cage traps. Foothold traps are effective, but they are banned in the state unless a qualified trapper applies for a special permit from DEM. He said the SVF Foundation on Harrison Avenue, which breeds rare livestock, received a permit to remove coyotes from the property.

"People need a permit to set a coyote trap on their own property," he said.

Brown said animal rights activists are now lobbying for legislation that would ban all foothold traps in the state, with no exceptions or special permits allowed.

Council members said they would contact legislators and ask them to oppose this legislation.

Coyne also suggested birth control as a possible way to cut the coyote population.

Danger to people?

During Wednesday's council meeting, McLaughlin asked whether coyotes pose a danger to people.

"Since the first coyote was seen in this state in 1969, we've never had a report of someone being attacked by a coyote in Rhode Island," Brown said. "It's a perception issue. People see them and think it's a problem."

McLaughlin responded: "There probably isn't any basis for creating fear and anxiety in the community."

He rejected comments that there is a significant danger of coyotes attacking people.

"We have no data to suggest that is a problem," he said.

Still, there are sporadic stories of threatening behavior by coyotes.

Brown said people have cited a report of a woman being bitten in the leg by a coyote at an Interstate 95 rest area in Connecticut. However, he said, there was a McDonald's at the rest area and restaurant workers there had been feeding the coyote.

Also, wildlife officials this week are investigating what could be the first coyote attack on a human in New Jersey, following a backyard attack on a 22-month old toddler that was foiled by an 11-year-old. The toddler suffered bites on his head and neck and is undergoing a series of rabies shots as a precaution.