Photo by Marvin Samuel Tolentino Pineda / Getty Images
By Dr. Valli Fraser-Celin
Wilkinson, C. E., Quinn, N., Eng, C., & Schell, C. J. (2025). Environmental health and societal wealth predict movement patterns of an urban carnivore. Wiley Online Library. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.70088
Coyotes (Canis latrans) are resilient and adaptable urban carnivores, often seen not only surviving, but thriving in urban landscapes. Understanding coyote movements and landscape use can provide wildlife managers with important information regarding human-wildlife conflict and appropriate mitigation measures, as well as what constitutes usable coyote habitat and connectivity across landscapes, and how anthropogenic factors affect wildlife behaviour and ecology.
The authors of this study therefore focused their research on coyote movement patterns in Los Angeles, California, but they also included societal factors that also affect coyote movement and connectivity patterns.
Including societal factors (e.g. median income, pollution burden, including noise, building density, and population density) alongside linear infrastructure (e.g. road density, distance to railways) and ecological factors (e.g. vegetation, green spaces, water), provides a more holistic examination of how coyotes live in urban environments.
The authors used the data from 20 coyotes fitted with GPS collars to develop a coyote movement data set. From the data set, the researchers analyzed coyote home ranges, movement characteristics, including an analysis of their steps, and resource selection to answer the following research questions:
- How are coyote home ranges structured along diverse social-ecological gradients?
- Which factors best predict coyote movement patterns?
- How does coyote movement differ across varying levels of environmental health and vulnerability?
This research, which provides empirical data that support using socio-ecological frameworks to better understand urban wildlife, reveals environmental health, linear infrastructure, and wealth are key to understanding urban coyote movements and habitat selection. Overall the authors found that coyotes selected areas for vegetation/greenness, roads/railways, as well as rivers and flood channels. However, they selected areas against income, building/population/development density, pollution, and areas such as golf courses, cemeteries, and lakes.
Photo by Daniel Jara / Getty Images
For example, road dense areas can produce opportunities for foraging road kill and an opportunity to navigate more easily. Coyotes also tended to be found in lower income neighbourhoods; wealthier areas are more likely to have funds to support coyote removal or hazing, and have been shown to hold less tolerance toward urban carnivores, creating less favorable environments for coyotes. On the other hand, lower income areas may have less resource access, such as municipal trash removal (leading to an increased presence of rodents), creating a more favourable environment for coyotes. Pollution also played a role in coyote movement, whereby coyotes whose home ranges occurred in highly polluted areas were more likely to travel further to seek out parks and green spaces, where they may find more prey, denning sites, and vegetative cover compared to heavily manicured cemeteries and golf courses.
This research demonstrates that coupling ecological examinations of urban wildlife with societal factors can provide a more holistic understanding of urban wildlife movements, as well as resource and habitat selection. This information can provide valuable insights into wildlife management practices, human-wildlife interactions, and ultimately how cities can become more wildlife-inclusive, while mitigating conflict at the same time.
About Dr. Valli Fraser-Celin
Dr. Valli Fraser-Celin holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Guelph where she studied human-African wild dog conflict and conservation in Botswana, Africa. Valli has always been interested in the human dimensions of wildlife, in particular, humans’ relationships with large carnivores, she collaborated with the Fur-Bearers on a research project exploring Canadians’ perceptions of and knowledge about wolves. Valli is also passionate about dogs, and advocates for dog welfare through her Instagram channel @thelivesofwilddogs. In her spare time, she runs a pet pantry at her local community centre for pet guardians experiencing pet food insecurity.
