It was an shocking sight as Huntington Beach resident Bob Daniel drove up Main Street after an early morning shooting video at the beach: A coyote strolling casually in downtown, an area typically busy with tourists and beachgoers just a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean.
Daniel caught the moment on Wednesday, May 27, on camera as the coyote trotted past a stop sign, just across from Surf City Ale House.
“I’ve seen plenty of coyotes here in H.B., but never one downtown,” he said. “This was unusual.”
As people have stayed home in recent months amid the coronavirus pandemic, wildlife has been exploring empty streets usually bustling with people. Reports of coyotes, in particular, have been spotted in once-popular streets of San Francisco to Chicago and beyond.
But as restrictions loosen up and more people are going outside, what will happen when the wildlife starts to mix with human’s return?
“There’s not any more of the critters, but they are changing their behaviors,” said Eric Strauss, president’s professor of biology for Loyola Marymount University’s Center for Urban Resilience. “The wildlife in urban areas are always adjusting their behavior based on ours.”
Urban wildlife, like coyotes, have become dependent on humans for food, finding scraps on the streets in the darkness or early morning hours, while most people sleep.
During the coronavirus shutdown, “the abundant food resource got shut off in a matter of days. It changed the foraging dynamics, the risk analysis of what they should take in respect to searching for food,” Strauss said.
As people stayed indoors, our “center spots” were less used, allowing wildlife to expand their radius.
“In almost every city, you’re reading some story about them walking in some area that had been historically dominated by humans,” Strauss said. “There’s no people, and there’s not as much food, so they are taking longer to search for food.
“As we withdraw, more habitat becomes available for them to search for food,” he said. “Now they are showing up, there’s no people and no food. It takes longer to check out before they give up and go somewhere else.”
Plus, people are at home looking out of their windows when they would otherwise be in offices focused instead on work and other distractions, Strauss noted.
What we’re seeing during the coronavirus pandemic is “habitat fragmentation.”
“When we back off a bit, we see them move into the new areas,” he said.
When we move back outside, they will likely move away.
“Some coyotes are getting bolder,” he said.
In Laguna Beach recently, authorities have been on the hunt for a coyote that bit a 91-year-old man who was picking up his newspaper in the driveway. Authorities euthanized two coyotes that ultimately did not have matching DNA to the one that attacked.
Relocating a problem coyote is not an option because it only moves the problem to another neighborhood, California Department of Fish and Wildlife authorities say.
Strauss and his students are working on a project that uses about 30 remote cameras set around Culver City, recording when movement, whether it be human or wildlife, is sensed. Thousands of photos are being generated a week, showing the exact time and place creatures are detected without interfering with their behavior.
“What is their temporal use of land before the pandemic, through it and after?” Strauss wonders. “It will be very interesting to see.
“I think what we are going to see we can tie into exact human events.”
The Huntington Beach coyote seemed to just be out for a stroll, as it trotted across Main Street and Olive Avenue, chasing a squirrel under a car, Daniel said.
“He went around to the other side,” Daniel said, “and the squirrel got up a tree before the coyote could get breakfast.”
