A recently published academic paper is urging Toronto to take a more aggressive approach to problem coyotes, including euthanizing them, arguing that the city is not acting quickly enough to prevent injuries. The recommendations wade into a growing debate over how a major city should manage wild animals that have made themselves at home in dense urban neighbourhoods.
Urban coyotes are a reality in Toronto, and occasionally a dangerous one. Most of the time, the animals and people peacefully coexist, with residents describing encounters that are about as routine as spotting a raccoon or a skunk in the neighbourhood, where the general rule is that if you keep your distance, the coyote keeps its distance too.
But that uneasy balance has been tested. Toronto has seen a spike in coyote-human encounters in recent years, according to the paper, with the problem concentrated downtown in the Liberty Village and Fort York neighbourhoods, where the animals have increasingly come into close contact with residents and their pets.
The numbers underline the concern. Since 2020, there have been 20 coyote attacks on humans in the city, along with nearly 300 attacks on dogs, a toll that the paper's authors say points to a problem the city has been too slow to get ahead of as encounters have become more frequent.
In response, the paper argues that Toronto should be more aggressive in how it deals with problem coyotes, up to and including euthanizing the animals that pose a repeated risk. The authors frame the recommendation as a matter of public safety, contending that the current approach has not done enough to prevent people and pets from being hurt.
Lead author Dennis Murray acknowledged the difficult trade-offs involved, saying he did not get into his line of work because he wants to see wildlife die. At the same time, he said, there are limits to what is tolerable in urban environments when it comes to wildlife behaviour, a line that he argues some Toronto coyotes have crossed.
For its part, the city has been reluctant to take that step except in the most serious cases. Officials euthanized two coyotes last year, but that was described as a rare move, underscoring the gap between the paper's call for a tougher stance and the more cautious approach the city has taken so far to managing its urban coyote population.