What may have led to coyote encounter in Surrey, experts weigh in

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SURREY (NEWS 1130) – It turns out that incident on Monday evening in Surrey involving a coyote and a young girl wasn’t actually an attack, more of a close encounter.

But the animal did get close enough that conservation officers are still considering putting it down.

UBC Okanagan Biologist Adam Ford says cases like this are pretty rare, though the animals are indeed cunning. “There are a handful of animals that are quite adaptable. They have different shapes of brains and those tend to be the ones that can change their behaviour and learn new ways of getting food, so that includes bears and the dog family, wolves and coyotes,” explains Ford.

He adds while bears can “stray” into people-populated areas going after things like garbage, coyotes will often go undetected. “[Coyotes] can find ways of getting around and remaining undetected for the most part in urban areas alongside of us. They certainly can make the most out of the leftover crumbs that we have in our urban settings,” says Ford.

And it’s not just here. “We are seeing animals like coyotes and other carnivores living in urban areas. They’re in Chicago, they’re in Calgary. Any large city typically has these wildlife living alongside people whether we see them or not,” says Ford. “There are projects focusing on different aspects of urban coyote ecology. It’s a really fascinating subject because this is a large animal and we don’t typically think of them living in urban areas alongside of us.”

Coyotes forage on almost anything, according to Dr. Sara Dubois, an applied biologist at UBC, pointing out the close proximity of a school yard and trash to Monday’s encounter.

But it’s one particular element of that varied diet that really benefits us from day to day. “Coyotes are used to living with us. They’re used to living in cities. They are our natural pest controls. Their diets are 90 per cent plus of rodents. We need them in our cities actually to ensure that we don’t have an overrun of rodent populations,” says Dubois.

The girl involved in Monday’s incident has minor injuries and is expected to be OK as conservation officers continue to track the animal.

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