The really wild West (Coyotes in San Francisco)

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | Marshall Kilduff | Marshall Kilduff

[walkerk]

SHOTS RANG OUT. Animals fell. Hunters sidled forward to inspect their kill.

Not what you'd expect among the clipped grass and picnic tables of Golden Gate Park. But it happened when worried animal experts called in state hunters to dispatch two dog-nipping coyotes. Right here in animal-loving, gun-hating San Francisco.

It turns out that the city is filled with wildlife -- and we human roommates are learning to adjust. It's amazing -- and slightly dangerous -- that so many critters end up living in this concrete-and-stoplight city. As animal-world habitat is squeezed, wild creatures have gone exploring, marching into areas that no one imagined they'd like.

Coyotes definitely top the exotic scale. Shaggy, lean and narrow-eyed, they usually circle campfires in lousy Westerns and yowl at the moon. Now a few have arrived, most likely traveling up the Peninsula via parklands and the beach. They dine on small varmints such as gophers and mice -- no shortage of them on our soccer and baseball fields -- and generally keep to themselves like perfect neighbors.

Their numbers are maybe about the same as the Board of Supervisors (11) and the animals are likewise spread across the town, raising ankles to mark territory in Bernal Heights, the Presidio and Golden Gate Park. For several years, there've been plentiful sightings backed up by snapshots of coyotes in brushy fields or ridgelines.

[walkerk]

Surprised they didn't try declaring S.F. a "no coyote zone" instead.

[Greystoke]

They will raise taxes to support the coyotes

[SamuraiScot]

As animal-world habitat is squeezed, wild creatures have gone exploring, marching into areas

This is the environmentalist lie, spawned by people who didn't grow up in the country. In reality, there's more danged animal habitat, especially forests, near to our cities, than there has been in hundreds of years. So many people have left farming in the outskirts of our cities, that the land has grown up into berry bushes and young (and not-so-young) trees. It's been a feast for deer, turkeys, and coyotes. (Peter Huber of the Manhattan Institute has more on the re-growth of American forests.)

There were no bluebirds, deer, or turkeys 35 miles from NYC when I was a kid. Now that the cleared fields have given way to houses separated by stands of trees, you practically trip over those animals.

[flushing_kenny]

Well, the coyotes can be used to cull the homeless....

[rogue yam]

Shaggy, lean and narrow-eyed, they usually circle campfires in lousy Westerns and yowl at the moon. Now a few have arrived, most likely traveling up the Peninsula via parklands and the beach.

That reminds me, there's going to be a big "Summer of Love" reunion concert in Golden Gate Park over Labor Day weekend.

[c-b 1]

Leviticus 26:22

I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number; and your high ways shall be desolate.

[Constantine XI Palaeologus]

“Their numbers are maybe about the same as the Board of Supervisors”

Funny to see the supervisors directly compared to varmints.

[sergeantdave]

“As animal-world habitat is squeezed...”

Right, that’s why we have rescue teams, dogs, choppers, boats and other accouterments to find and recover lost or dead city tourists around here - they can’t find their way from stop sign to stop sign in all the paved forests, lakes, swamps and mountains here.

City dwellers, especially liberals, are amazingly clueless about the amount of wilderness in this country. City folks should simply draw the shades, buy a bottle of Ripple and hold up in their granite-topped kitchens until we’re done micro-marking concrete sidewalks over every square inch of wilderness.