![]() ![]() And ecologists like Young hope that in addition to providing a trove of scientific data, the collars will help two toothy, intelligent species share the dense streets of the city. Though coyotes have been back in San Francisco since at least the early 2000s, this is the city’s first radio-collared population. Then they attached a tracking collar, so the animals could be followed, and a colored tag in each ear, so they could be identified through binoculars. They took blood samples, tissue samples, hair and whisker samples, and anal, ocular, and nasal swabs, collecting a wealth of information about DNA, dietary habits, overall health. Then, in the fall, they caught five pups born that year. ![]() In the spring, they trapped the alpha female and a one-year-old-02M. Sure enough, a few days later, California Fish and Wildlife called: “We’ve got your animal.” 02M had been hit by a car and killed.Ĭoyote 02M was one of seven coyotes living in the national park that Young and others radio-collared in 2016, hoping to see how they interact with each other, avoid or approach humans, navigate city life. When Jonathan Young, the Presidio Trust ecologist who’d been watching satellite data from 02M’s GPS collar trace across his computer screen in the Presidio, saw where the coyote was hanging out, he had a sinking feeling. Either way, he circled back and gravitated toward a swirl of off-ramps and on-ramps where 280 met 85, living off mice and voles he found in the dry grass and trash on the side of the freeway. Or maybe he just felt more comfortable with the tinge of exhaust and mowed lawns that reminded him of home. Loping along the edge of the road, as he’d done for miles already, would take him into the Santa Cruz Mountains, with its acres of tall redwoods and deep shade, a larger stretch of wild land than he’d ever seen. But he kept moving, sniffing around the backyard pools of Los Gatos, until he ended up at Highway 17. During the day he’d hide and sleep, then at night he continued on, parallel to the highway, poking around Millbrae and San Mateo, exploring the manicured fantasy of the Stanford campus. Heading south, 02M left the restored meadows and eucalyptus forest for the habitat of Home Depot and In-N-Out Burger. The unease pushed him down to Lands End and back, long-distance pacing. Pale, with stilt legs, enormous ears and an anxious expression-the picture of a gangly adolescent-he was old enough to want his own territory and a mate. But for the past while, he’d been restless. Then, a bit older, he scampered through the landscape of palm trees and cream-colored buildings with red-tile roofs, the smells of ocean and hot pavement, learning to listen for the scratchings of gophers underground and to catch his own. For months he wriggled in a mass of brothers and sisters, playing and fighting, waiting for his parents to show up with a nice dead rat. He’d been born in the Presidio, San Francisco, likely a year and a half before, in an earth den dug under a log and hidden by English ivy or in the pit left by a windfall cypress. One night a little more than a year ago coyote 02M took off into the dark. (Photo by Sebastian Kennerknecht, Urban Coyote Initiative) Ecologist Jonathan Young holds a coyote skull in the Presidio, San Francisco.
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