🤲🏼 CO-EXISTING WITH COYOTES
Sharing a fb post re: Co-existing With Coyotes:

"WHO GETS TO LIVE WITH WILDLIFE?
THE SOCIOECONOMICS OF COYOTE REMOVAL

Coyotes are a part of our natural environment. Yet, how communities respond to them can depend on more than the actual risks these animals pose.
Research suggests that neighborhood income, public attitudes, and access to resources can influence how communities manage urban wildlife.

Studies of urban coyotes have found differences in public attitudes toward lethal control across socioeconomic groups.
Research examining coyote survival in Chicago also found that coyotes living in lower-income neighborhoods were more likely to survive to age two than those in wealthier neighborhoods. These findings raise important questions about the role that human attitudes and wildlife-management practices play in determining whether these animals are allowed to coexist with us.

We should ask ourselves: Are we responding to documented public-safety threats, or are we trying to eliminate wildlife simply because we don’t want to share our surroundings with it?

In communities where residents can afford wildlife-control services, the ability to pursue trapping and removal may be greater.
But the ability to pay for extermination does not automatically make it necessary, humane, or ecologically sound.

Coyotes are intelligent, social animals with complex family relationships. They help regulate rodent populations and are an important part of the ecosystem.
Disrupting their family groups and territorial structure can have unintended consequences.
Research has shown that removing coyotes does not necessarily reduce their numbers over the long term and, under some circumstances, can contribute to increased reproduction and immigration.

In the Lakewood Country Club area, we live alongside a golf course that provides habitat for a variety of wildlife.
That natural environment is part of what makes this community unique. Living near wildlife means occasionally encountering it. It also means accepting a responsibility to learn how to coexist with it safely.

Of course, legitimate safety concerns must be taken seriously. Coyotes that pose a documented, persistent threat require an appropriate response.
But occasional sightings, barking, or normal seasonal behavior should not automatically become justification for lethal removal.

Education should come before extermination.
Residents deserve accurate information about coyote behavior, practical guidance on protecting pets, and transparent explanations of any proposed wildlife-control measures.
Decisions should be based on documented evidence, established wildlife-management principles, and consideration of nonlethal alternatives.

Wildlife does not have a price tag, a property value, or a preferred ZIP code. The question is whether our approach to wildlife reflects responsible stewardship or simply our ability to make unwanted animals disappear.

We can protect our families, respect legitimate safety concerns, and still recognize that coyotes have a place in the natural world we share.

Coexistence begins with education, not fear.

THE BIGGER ISSUE:
THE HUMAN-CENTERED MINDSET

The desire to eliminate wildlife simply because it inconveniences us reflects a much larger problem in how humans relate to the natural world: the belief that we are superior to nature, rather than a part of it.

This same mindset has contributed to habitat destruction, deforestation, pollution, biodiversity loss, and the climate crisis.

When we treat forests as obstacles to development, wetlands as land to be filled, predators as pests to be eliminated, and wildlife as something that must disappear whenever it conflicts with our preferences, we disrupt the natural systems that sustain life on this planet.

Climate change is driven primarily by greenhouse gas emissions, but the broader pattern of treating nature as something to dominate, exploit, and control also contributes to environmental degradation.
Healthy ecosystems help store carbon, regulate water, support biodiversity, and make our communities more resilient.

Coyotes are a small but meaningful example of this larger issue.
They are not intruders in a world that belongs exclusively to humans. They are native wildlife trying to survive in a landscape increasingly shaped by human development.

We cannot continue destroying natural habitats, displacing wildlife, and disrupting ecosystems while expecting the natural world to remain healthy and stable for future generations.

We do not own nature. We are part of it.
Learning to coexist with wildlife is about more than saving coyotes. It is about changing our relationship with the living world before we destroy more of what sustains us."

#CoexistenceNotExtermination #UrbanWildlife #Coyotes #HumaneWildlifeManagement #WildlifeEducation