Coyote attacks on humans are uncommon and rarely cause serious injuries, mainly because of the moderately small size of the coyote, but have been increasingly frequent, especially in the state of California.
As humans expand their living regions and coyotes extend their range also, contact is unavoidable. More often than not, coyotes make a special effort to avoid people, however they are finding that people are a decent hotspot for food. Creative and versatile as coyotes may be, they will exploit this when they can. In urban zones and in some National Parks the coyotes are changing their behavior.
The most difficult issue is that the creatures may move toward becoming habituated to people. As they lose their fear of people, they will become bolder in approaching people and may put themselves in hazardous situations they would normally avoid.
Coyotes have attacked people. It isn’t common, however there have been more attacks announced as of late because of the urbanization and populace development of urban areas that visitor natural life territories.
“Coyote attacks on humans and pets include expanded inside the previous 5 years in California. Forty-eight such attacks on kids and adults were confirmed from 1998 through 2003, compared with 41 attacks amid the period 1988 through 1997; most episodes happened in Southern California close to the rural wildland interface.”
“Out of the 89 Coyote attacks in California, 56 of the attacks made damage at least one people. Out of those that caused damage, 55% were attacks on adults. In 35 incidents, where coyotes stalked or attacked small children, the possibility of serous or lethal damage appeared to be likely if the kid had not been rescued.”
Normally coyotes are timid and shy away from people, but they have been known to attack people. There is just 1 known fatality that happened in California in 1981. A 3 year-old young lady was attacked and executed by a coyote when she was playing unattended in her front yard.
If people feed coyotes or if there is a food source associated with humans the coyotes will turn out to be less dreadful of individuals and more assaults will happen. So in order to reduce or eliminate attacks it is VERY important that we condition the coyotes to fear people. People can help condition coyotes by doing the following:
- Never feed coyotes.
- Remove coyote food sources such as trash, fruit and pet food from the environment
- Keeping little pets inside from nightfall to day break or in safe enclosures.
- Never leave kids unattended in yards or parks.
- Harass coyotes with loud noises, clapping hands, yelling, throwing rocks at them and waving our arms to create fear.
- Call the local department of Fish and Game or nearby law implementation organization if coyotes attack people, turn out to be excessively forceful by showing lack of fear of humans or if they attack small pets.