Habituation, den defence and predatory opportunism appear to have contributed to coyote aggression in an urban park

Abstract

Human–wildlife conflicts in urban settings are increasing and sometimes cause injury or mortality for people and wildlife. Conflicts may be exacerbated by large increases in outdoor human recreation, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic, when people were prevented from gathering indoors and made increasing use of parks. This appears to have occurred in Vancouver's Stanley Park, British Columbia, Canada, where an unprecedented 45 coyote, Canis latrans, attacks on humans occurred between December 2020 and August 2021. To understand how this situation arose and might predict similar future problems, we compared reported aggressive human–coyote encounters and coyote sightings in Stanley Park from 2020 to 2021. We sought to identify predictors of aggression among spatial and temporal variables associated with human activity and coyote behaviour. We also compared characteristics of human victims of attacks to those of park users in 2024. Coyote aggression was higher (1) during pandemic restrictions on indoor gatherings (associated with higher human activity outdoors), (2) on trails with greater human activity, (3) during times of the day and week with relatively low human activity and (4) in areas closer to coyote dens and farther from potential sources of anthropogenic food, including garbage bins and picnic areas. While proximity to anthropogenic food sources did not positively predict aggression, anecdotal reports described the behaviour of the aggressive coyotes as likely food-conditioned. Relative to observed park users, victims of coyote attacks were more often running and alone when attacked, but there was no effect of a person's age or gender, or of domestic dog presence. Our results suggest coyote aggression in Stanley Park likely resulted from a combination of habituation, den defence, opportunistic predatory behaviours, and possibly food conditioning. To avoid similar situations in the future, wildlife managers could encourage the public to recreate in groups, during peak-use hours and away from known den sites.