North Tonawanda, N.Y. (WBEN) - Concerns over the population of coyotes in the City of North Tonawanda continue to be an issue for residents, which is why city leadership has taken appropriate action to try and address the problem.
Over the past few weeks, Mayor Austin Tylec says the city has received quite a few reports, complaints and calls surrounding coyote sightings in the city. There also has been instances where the coyotes have killed people's pets.
In addition, the North Tonawanda Central School District noticed coyotes roaming school grounds during day hours, forcing officials to move activities just to be precautious.
That has led the city to hire a licensed trapper locally to track the coyotes, and properly address the concerns of residents and officials.
"The No. 1 concern with this is rabies, obviously, attacks of people's pets or people in general - students, kids," said Mayor Tylec in an interview with WBEN. "We're not trying to get rid of all the coyotes, by any means. We just want to make sure that we're not seeing ones that act strange, where they're walking around during the day, or maybe there's a loss of hair, they're very skinny. These are some of the signs, I've been told, where they might be unhealthy, sick or have rabies. That's really the No. 1 concern here."
From what the licensed trapper has told him, Tylec says the coyotes have been spotted both in packs, as well as individually, with some of them roaming the streets of the city.
"The employee who is helping with this would set up cameras in public spaces to track these, and what he told me the other day was there are hundreds of coyotes, which kind of blew my mind. It was like, 'Where do they go?' We don't have vast forests here and so on. But he suspects hundreds of coyotes, it could be individual ones or packs of them in some areas. It's a little concerning," Tylec said.
While coyotes are relatively shy, they might be more tempted to get closer or approach humans or other animals if there may be something wrong with them. It's also the time of the year where coyotes are trying to find whatever food they can in order to get ready for the winter season.
Tylec says there are a couple of factors that may be to blame for the influx of coyotes in the city.
"It could be construction in surrounding areas that maybe normally are very wooded. We have rural areas in Niagara County, and North Tonawanda is a little denser than, say, Wheatfield or Pendleton and so on. So it could be that," he said. "Coyotes, I'm told, can travel many, many, many miles, so it doesn't just mean they're coming from neighboring communities. And food, too, we always tell people, in general, you probably shouldn't be feeding anything outdoors, because it attracts all different types of animals. Whether it's skunks or rats or coyotes, deer, animals can fend for themselves a lot of times. And a lot of neighbors call and complain about excessive feeding at maybe an adjacent neighbors house that is leading to some kind of rodent or animal."
So far, through roughly a week of working with the licensed trapper, Tylec says only a couple coyotes have been dealt with. He's hoping, though, this can be an educational piece, as well as a safety measure for residents.
So what can residents of North Tonawanda do if they happen to see a coyote in their neighborhood?
"What we did is we tried to centralize the calls, complaints, concerns, and created a form online, I posted it to my Facebook. It's just a simple form where people could put their name, their contact information, and then the location of the sighting, time, day, and any other notes that they want to put with it," Tylec noted. "And then the individual in our department might reach out. If it seems like there's a specific area where there's a lot of them, or there's means for concern - if it's around maybe a playground, school district and so on - then the individual would set up cameras. I'm no expert, that's why we have the experts. And then set up traps."
Tylec notes the particular coyotes of concern are the ones that might be sick, and potentially carrying diseases and mites.
"[The trapper] was telling me that these mites that could be on coyotes could, more or less, hop off of them and then attached to maybe someone's dog. I guess it could lead to potential infections too, if those mites were to get in the bloodstream. There's all these different pieces to it," he said.
How can people tell if they actually spot a coyote in their neighborhood?
"They're smaller than a German Shepherd, just for size sake, because a lot of people sometimes think they're actual dogs, but they're certainly not," Tylec said.
"We're just being precautious, we're being proactive. The last thing we need to happen is to hear of any kind of child attack by this. We're not trying to be fear mongers by any means. It's really just making people aware, putting some attention towards it."
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