Recent Distribution of Coyotes Across an Urban Landscape in Southeastern Michigan

Human-wildlife interactions in urban areas are widely reported by ecologists to be the result of human encroachment on wildlife habitat. Highly mobile species, however, have been documented by both wildlife biologists and casual observers to occupy areas heavily populated by humans. Range expansion and population growth of coyotes (Canis latrans) has led to their increased presence in metropolitan Detroit, Michigan, where poor economic conditions over the last several decades have resulted in the reversion of numerous recreational areas and abandoned parcels to more wooded or vegetated conditions that have provided potential wildlife habitat. We performed an extensive survey for coyote evidence (i.e., carcasses, den sites, scats, sightings, or tracks) across metropolitan Detroit to examine distribution across both the general region and specific land cover types. We found 58% of all coyote evidence on unpaved trails, paths, and unimproved roads within edge habitats (e. g., grassland adjacent to urban non-vegetative land cover), with den sites and tracks the only types of evidence found strictly in interior habitats. Land cover around evidence points included more wooded land cover than expected in suburban areas, suggesting the importance of tree cover for coyote occupancy, and more open space and wooded land cover than expected in urban areas, highlighting the coyotes' avoidance of heavily populated areas. We speculate that habitat characterized by tree cover has likely never been limiting within metropolitan Detroit, and that reoccupation of southeastern Michigan by coyotes is more likely a consequence of expanding coyote populations outside of suburban and urban areas rather than newly available habitat resulting from land cover change.