www.insideHALTON.com · OAKVILLE BEAVER Friday, June 22, 2012 · 2 Please don't feed the coyotes, Town urges By David Lea OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF The location may have changed, but the `don't feed the coyotes' message is the same. The Town of Oakville and Oakvillegreen took their coyote information meeting south, Wednesday, holding a presentation for a group of about 14 people at the Sir John Colborne Recreation Centre for Seniors. While the Glen Abbey area has been the site of some human/coyote conflicts in the recent past, including a January incident where an eightyear-old girl was bitten on the leg, Town officials said the animals have been spotted in other parts of town and, as such, residents should know what to do if they encounter one. "The presentation is called `Living with Coyotes' because, as you will hear throughout the presentation, that is what we have to learn to do," said Liz Benneian, Oakvillegreen. "They are a hugely successful animal. They are in all our major cities across North America. They are in New York, they are in Chicago, they are in Toronto and they are here in Oakville as well." Benneian said the animal has been in Ontario for about 100 years and in Oakville for several decades, adapting to the area after humans drove out the wolf, a key predator. The coyote, described as a higherorder predator, feeds mostly on small rodents, but will also eat geese and, occasionally, deer. "It's important for us to have these higher-order predators to keep the rabbits and the mice and the rats and the squirrels under control -- otherwise those populations would just explode," said Benneian. "In fact, we saw that in Oakville a few years ago. We had a mange epidemic that was going through the fox and coyote population. Their populations fell quite low and the rabbits just went out of control and I know I lost hundreds of dollars worth of shrubs in my backyard because of the rabbits." Coyotes have also been described as good for Oakville's tree canopy as they prey on the rodents often responsible for the deaths of saplings. Benneian said the animals have a natural fear of humans and will avoid people whenever possible. However, problems occur when humans directly or indirectly feed coyotes and cause them to lose this fear. JAMES HOGGETT / SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER safety talk: The Town of Oakville held a coyote information evening Wednesday night at the Sir John Colborne Recreation Centre for Seniors in Bronte. Speaker Liz Benneian, from the Oakvillegreen Conservation Association, provided some valuable tips on how to keep coyotes away from your home and what to do if you encounter one to the dozen people who attended. A coyote being fed by one person will approach other people expecting similar treatment and may become aggressive if it doesn't get what it wants. To prevent this, Benneian advised residents to never feed a coyote on purpose and to reduce the animal's chance of finding a meal on a person's property by putting trash out the day of garbage pickup and not the night before, picking up fallen fruit from trees, and not putting pet food outside. Keeping cats indoors, as per local bylaws, and not leaving small dogs outside unsupervised were other suggestions. Town of Oakville Senior Environmental Policy Analyst Donna Doyle said even after the young girl was bitten in January, people continued to feed coyotes. The Town, at one point, was called to a wooded area where someone had been covering pieces of bread with peanut butter and leaving them on the ground. In another incident, Doyle said a Glen Abbey woman was leaving chicken and stew out for coyotes, much to the dismay of her neighbours. See Residents page 7 CANADA DAY Special! PAYASYOU GO! NO Annual Contract! NO Registration Fee! NO Long Term Obligation! GRAND OPENING ON NOW! Fun, Fitness Results and So Much More Visit Us Today! per mo * nth (+HST ) $15 Brigh pper Level! on the U FROM !...ul! W NE t! Beautif OFFER EXPIRES JULY 2, 2012. $15 (+HST) per month is based on an Early Bird Single Membership limited to 6am-9am, Monday to Friday. Other Single, Couple and Family memberships also available. Call for details. 474 Iroquois Shore Road . Oakville . 905-842-2366