Is the coyote coexistence strategy working? Experts weigh in after animal attacks

Violent coyote encounters across the Greater Toronto Area have left some residents on edge and sparked debate among wildlife experts on municipalities’ responses to aggressive animals.

Increased coyote sightings and a string of attacks on children in the Toronto area in recent months raised alarms and questions about encounters with the wild canines.

In July, a coyote approached a toddler at a playground in Whitby, Ont., and bit him on the face, just weeks after another child was hurt in a coyote attack in one of the town’s public fields. These incidents followed separate coyote attacks on a child and a teenager in Markham, Ont., in May.

In Toronto, data from the city shows coyotes carried out 20 attacks on humans that caused injuries, including nine biting incidents, between 2019 and June of this year.

Dennis Murray, a professor of biology at Trent University, said coyotes mainly act aggressively to protect their dens and pups.

“It’s just trying to tell people, ‘Back off, get out of here, we own the space while we’re raising our young in that area,’” he said in an interview.

But Murray said coyotes are also becoming aggressive and predatory toward humans due to habituation as they seek food in urban areas – and are even fed by some people.

“(A coyote) loses its fear of humans, and then as it gets hungry, perhaps it … is testing to see if the child could be prey,” he said.

Murray said predatory behaviour is “largely irreversible” in coyotes, so municipalities need to act quickly when they identify the animals responsible for attacks on pets or humans. Lethal removal or euthanasia should be considered in such cases before it’s too late, he said, unless it turns out that the coyote is just defending its den site.

City of Toronto data also shows coyotes attacked or bit 331 dogs from 2019 until June of this year, with 143 such incidents reported across 2024 and 2025.

In May 2025, city officials decided to euthanize a pair of mated coyotes believed to be responsible for dozens of attacks on dogs in the Liberty Village and Fort York areas.

Murray, who authored an academic paper about those incidents, said his research found that four “problem coyotes” were attacking humans and dogs in both neighbourhoods.

“We surmised that the municipality was delinquent, frankly, that it should have acted a lot sooner,” he said.

The city said it continues to investigate and monitor reports of concerning coyote behaviour, and it responds to each case individually.

Toronto’s coyote management approach is based on a coexistence strategy informed by expertise and research, and it “prioritizes public safety while recognizing that coyotes are an established part of Toronto’s urban ecosystem,” the city said in a statement.

The city said long-term prevention, public education and aversion tactics have been effective in mitigating coyote encounters, calling removal of the wild canines ineffective, costly and counterproductive.

East of Toronto, Whitby’s supervisor of bylaw and animal services said the town euthanized two coyotes that displayed “concerning and abnormal behaviour” in July, but she couldn’t confirm if either was involved in the reported attacks on children.

“The town is committed to supporting a safe community where residents can coexist with wildlife,” Kate Novia wrote in a statement, noting that Whitby has a “graduated approach, with the level of response increasing based on observed behaviour and potential risk to public safety.”

Novia said the town has received more than 800 reports of coyote sightings since January, almost three times higher than what was reported during the same period last year.

But that surge isn’t reflective of the number of coyotes in Whitby, she said, citing the town’s communications on the topic as a reason behind the sharp increase in reporting.

North of Toronto in Markham, where a child and a youth were attacked in May, the city said it received a higher-than-usual number of coyote sighting reports this year.

The city said it has lethally removed coyotes that showed “unprecedented and abnormal behaviour,” but did not specify how many were killed.

Tiziana A. Gelmi Candusso, a Toronto-based spatial ecologist, said getting rid of coyotes is a temporary solution because they are quickly replaced.

“It will appease people for a little bit, maybe create controversy, but it will not fix the problem, because we’re having this recurrent issue and it’s always in the same areas,” she said.

A better solution is to change human behaviours that trigger coyotes, and that means keeping dogs on a leash all the time and not feeding wildlife, she said.

Gelmi Candusso, who built a network of wildlife cameras across Toronto between 2020 and 2022 as part of her post-doctoral research at the University of Toronto, said she isn’t sure the coyote population has increased in the city.

“The fact that we see more attacks is not necessarily (indicative of) the problem that we have too many coyotes,” she said.

The problem mainly lies with people who have not yet learned how to coexist with the animals, she said.

Educational programs, including sessions for children and seniors, are key to increasing awareness of how to prevent confrontation with coyotes, Gelmi Candusso said.

“I would include outreach at schools … when kids learn something, they also like (to) tell their parents,'” she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 20, 2026.

Sharif Hassan, The Canadian Press