Check out the fantastic coyote photos at the Friends of Sam Smith Park blog. Our dog walker has seen them twice recently while out with the partners. She noted that one of them had a tracking collar as well.
Check out the fantastic coyote photos at the Friends of Sam Smith Park blog. Our dog walker has seen them twice recently while out with the partners. She noted that one of them had a tracking collar as well.
27th Street 
See, this is just wrong on so many levels. Ok fine there are medium sized predators who prefer to hunt and kill in packs running around in a public park in the city. Seems to me that there are 2 possible outcomes to this. One outcome would be that one or more of these coyotes kill or maim someone. An adult coyote is quite capable of killing and eating say an 8 year old kid. No problem. The other outcome would be that these coyotes continue to live and hunt in the park and never bother a human or a pet belonging to a human. Ever. Not even once in say the next 300 years. For the record, my money is on these coyotes getting their 15 minutes of fame by killing or seriously hurting someone. Its not that I dont think coyotes are sorta neat. Rather, I think ‘ever’ is a really long time and these are wild animals, predators and what they do is well, what they do is kill things and eat them.
Ok so you think Im a nut case and really the coyotes arent predators at all and no way in hell would they ever attack a human because they only chase roadrunners. Fine. But the safety issue isnt the only one that really bothers me. The coyotes wear tracking collars. Somebody was paid to catch these predators and put a radio collar on them. Once they were caught we could have relocated them to Moose Jaw Saskatchewan where they wouldnt pose a threat to anyone’s safety but no, once we had the collars on we let them go again in the park. Now someone (Im guessing in the employ of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources) is being paid to watch where these coyotes go every day and to draw and publish cute little maps that show where they go. If you poke around the friends of Sam Smith website you will find at least one of these little maps. This is happening at a time when the Ministry of Natural Resources has had its budget slashed and has been forced to cut back on what I consider to be important functions like enforcing our natural resources regulations.
Not too far from where I live there is a place called the Pine River Fishing Area. It is a few miles upstream from the hamlet of Terra Nova. Some decades ago the Ministry of Natural Resources acquired a pretty large tract of land there which included miles of Pine River and a huge pond. It was Provincially significant because the stretch of river involved included some of the best spawning grounds for Georgian Bay rainbow trout and once the MNR locked up the land these spawning grounds were protected from development. In my opinion this was a brilliant move. They went even further though. They put a road into the pond, installed washrooms and picnic areas and for a while even staffed the place. The pond was stocked with brook trout and the place became a beautiful woodland park. And it was well used by the public. Budget cuts ended all that though. Oh the Ministry still owns the land but the pond isnt stocked, the washrooms are gone, the roadway to the pond is not maintained and the land is essentially abandoned. If you ask why the answer is budget cuts. There is no money available to maintain the property. One MNR employee told me privately he wouldnt be surprised to see the land sold to developers. This seriously pisses me off. We have money to track a couple of coyotes in a city park but none to maintain the Pine River Fishing Area. Somebody needs a swift kick in the ass in my humble opinion.