Originally seen in Fish’n Canada’s Week in Review

As we reported earlier in the year, Vancouver’s Stanley Park had been seeing record high coyote incidents, with 45 attacks being reported between December 2020 and September 2021.

These attacks all came in just a four square kilometre range and were all linked to human feeding. Due to how widespread and severe this problem had become, local conservation authorities had determined that lethal measures were the only option for these highly food-conditioned animals. “The decision to lethally remove the coyotes was not the province’s first choice, and only comes after considerable effort into finding other alternatives to prevent the incidents,” said a statement from the ministry shortly after the attacks.

This decision, however, did not go through without controversy, and even celebrities the likes of Bryan Adams got involved and contributed to the backlash.

Despite the backlash, the ministry carried out their decision and all problem coyotes were lethally removed from the park. Thankfully, the effort appears to be a success as zero coyote conflicts have since been reported, despite coyote sightings remaining at a steady level.

“People have seen them from a distance and they run away when people are around, which is very encouraging,” said Nadia Xenakis, the urban wildlife program coordinator for SPES in an interview with CBC. “That’s how coyotes should be behaving in Stanley Park.”

As of October, the park has also made it illegal to feed any wildlife within the park, a law that hopes to keep human-animal conflicts at a comfortable low and avoid another situation like we saw this fall.

This excerpt was taken from Fish’n Canada’s Week in Review, our weekly recap of all things relevant to the Canadian outdoorsman. For more stories like this, check out the full article below and tune back in every Friday to catch up on everything you missed!