Port Hawkesbury asking people to report coyote sightings

The Town of Port Hawkesbury, N.S., is asking people to report coyote sightings to the Department of Natural Resources following a spike in local sightings. 

DNR says it's had as many as 12 reports from the town in the last two weeks.

Daphne MacDonald, who lives in the Tamarac Heights subdivision, said she and her husband, Ron, set up a motion-sensitive web camera in their backyard. She was surprised by what it captured.

"The coyote can show up anywhere up to three times in 24 hours," she said. "The coyote now comes out during the day, too."

In fact the visits have become so common they've given the coyote a name: Selfie.

Concerns for safety

MacDonald says she's very concerned about neighbourhood children coming into contact with coyotes.

"They play outside on a constant basis," she said. "They play hide and seek at night. They play spotlight so if a little kid is out playing and this thing is out at 9:30 or 10:00 p.m.... What makes it stop from going to chase after this kid? That's the scary part."

MacDonald says the coyotes are becoming accustomed to people. In one instance her husband called her into the yard to see the coyote and when she made noise the animal didn't leave.

The Department of Natural Resources says the coyotes are not a danger to people in the town. Biologist Mike Boudreau has been following the situation from the DNR office in Kentville.

'They tend to avoid us'

"That should not be a concern," he said. "They are normally afraid of us so they tend to avoid us, us being humans. People and certainly multiple people they tend to avoid."

Boudreau says the best way to reduce the number of coyotes is to keep them from accessing food sources.

Coyote education needed

"They are very good at outsourcing food," he said. "Certainly house cats, small domestic animals, if people are feeding birds or pets outside, if there is an open compost site, they may use that as a food source," he said.

Boudreau says nobody is calling for a cull, and MacDonald doesn't want one either, though she is tired of keeping her pets indoors.

"We will live with them [the coyotes]," she said. "I don't want to kill the animal. But the only thing is right now we can't really live."

MacDonald suggests DNR visit Port Hawkesbury and educate people who might have things in their yard that are attracting coyotes.