The Times podcast: Coyotes go urban; humans freak out with their new home (Tues., 5 p.m., WESA)
The Times podcast: Coyotes go urban; humans freak out with their new home (Tues., 5 p.m., WESA)
The Times was listening to a podcast about humans’ long relationship with Coyotes—from wolf to coyote—when it hit me. Coyotes are urban animals, they’re urban animals who live in the city. They’re urban animals who used to live in the wilderness, of course, but now they live in the city.
“This is not a very popular animal,” said one of the hosts, and then he asked the audience—he was interviewing people who work in a wildlife rescue center—why were wildlife centers so interested in these urban animals? His answer: “They want to save them. They want to protect them.”
They are urban animals who use the city as their home. They have evolved there in the last two decades, and many of them live there right on the edge of the wilderness. This is why I live here.
In addition to wildlife rescue, this wildlife rescue center works with humans who have lost their lives to wildlife and with people who have gotten lost in the wilderness. The guests of this podcast came from a variety of backgrounds: a wildlife-rehabilitation expert, a wildlife biologist, a city planner, an urban archaeologist, an urban park superintendent, plus a couple of people who had lost their lives to coyotes. All of them had spent many hours talking with coyotes, studying them and their habits because they wanted to save them.
After listening to all of this, I went to see the Coyotes.
I had a good relationship with a few of the people who appeared on the podcast and with the coyotes, and I wanted to see if I could see if I could identify the coyotes’ new habitat: the city.
The first thing I knew when I walked into an outdoor wildlife center was that it was a place where people in the know went to see a coyote. And I knew that when people from the wild, and from the wilderness, went into a wildlife center like this one, they saw a