Coyote season is on. Here’s how to stay safe

As temperatures rise coyote encounters are expected to increase across the Bay Area The East Bay Regional Park District which includes parks across Alameda and Contra Costa counties distributed an advisory this week on how best to stay safe when encountering the animals Created with help from biologists at the park district it provides five main tips to prevent adverse encounters avoid hiking alone in matter of crisis keep children and pets nearby and dogs on a leash be aware of surroundings when walking jogging or riding stay on designated trails and never attempt to feed a coyote The advisory also urges visitors to call the non-emergency park dispatch at - to account sick or injured coyotes or aggressive encounters Park district spokesperson Dave Mason declared coyote encounters become more frequent in the summer months because more people visit parks and because numerous pups born in the spring are beginning to mature and become more adventurous They start to go out and discover their surroundings and there s naturally more sightings he commented Coyotes a longtime fixture of the Bay Area ecosystem are rarely involved in instances of aggression though they sometimes do occur In a -year-old girl was hospitalized after a coyote attacked her at an East Bay park and in a coyote bit a -year-old boy as he was riding his bike to school in Irvine To prevent such adverse encounters the advisory suggests engaging in hazing or intimidation if coyotes get within feet People should maintain eye contact be as big and loud as manageable and use an umbrella or other tool to scare the animal away Other park services in the Bay Area are also expecting an increase in coyote encounters in the coming months Nadine Abousalem senior communications officer for Santa Clara County Parks explained coyotes are now all over the parks and that the number one thing to remember is to keep any food out of reach Making sure that food is properly stowed away and not feeding wildlife is really really significant she declared Feeding coyotes just makes them more used to humans and that causes an uptick in bites Derek Neumann field operations manager at the Santa Clara County Open Space Authority added that the hot summer months often drive coyotes closer to water sources and echoed Abousalem s point about not feeding any wildlife at all Certain people will ask what s the concern with feeding squirrels he disclosed One it s not natural for the squirrels But more importantly it starts habituating animals to humans he revealed If we have more squirrels hanging around where humans are the squirrels are a primary prey for coyotes and that can bring the coyotes in closer to humans as well Janet Kessler a San Francisco-based amateur naturalist who has spent the past years observing the animals using a mm handheld camera stated the key to understanding coyotes is to recognize how similar they are to humans Their family lives in particular Kessler announced often present soap opera scenarios One San Francisco coyote she mentioned had become unresponsive to his mate and was more interested in being fed by chosen people He would go off for hours waiting for food instead of spending time with her she announced And so one day she just appeared with a guy that was paying attention to her In one instance she observed a coyote pup spying on a sibling as it buried something before digging it up for itself when the sibling went away And in a classic example of what Kessler described as the push-pull behavior between pups and parents a pup did a flip in the air only for its parent to growl like please just leave me alone The core of their existence is their family life which in its own way is similar to ours she stated That s what they live for It s this devotion to their families that Kessler says leads coyotes to sometimes become more proactively protective of themselves and their spaces This includes the behavior of escorting in which coyotes follow hikers at close distance until the hikers have exited the quarter-mile radius surrounding the coyote s den The East Bay park advisory suggests that in these instances hikers should walk calmly away Kessler agreed but added that if a coyote comes right at a person they can scare it away by throwing a handful of gravel at its feet It kind of disarms the coyote enough to make them stop and wonder like hey this is pretty impressive she stated The intent Kessler explained is to not to hurt the coyote but to send it a message to back off The East Bay park advisory recommends leashing all pets and even buying pets a vest that would prevent a lethal injury if a coyote were to attack Phoebe Parker-Shames a wildlife ecologist who has led efforts to analysis coyotes at the Presidio Trust in San Francisco mentioned it s especially key to take precautions when accompanied by dogs because coyotes often view them as a threat Related Articles Furry friends get royal medicine at San Jose pet party Shark prompts 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