Integrating animal welfare into wildlife policy: a comparative analysis of coyote management programs in California, United States and Ontario, Canada

Abstract

Coyotes (Canis latrans) are native to North America and are frequently seen in and around urbanized areas. As human population grows and urban sprawl encroaches on coyote habitat, human-coyote conflicts increase. Faced with the need to find solutions, policy-makers, and conservationists are challenged with the task of designing coyote management programs that would ensure public safety while conserving the species. The need to consider the welfare of individual animals, as encompassed by the emerging field of Compassionate Conservation, adds an additional challenge. By examining two coyote management programs’ case studies in North America—one in Long Beach, California and another in Oakville, Ontario—the benefits of adopting compassionate solutions are illustrated. As exemplified by Oakville’s strategy, compassionate programs promote the moral treatment of animals while proving to be economically and socially superior to strategies employing lethal measures. Such strategies adopt proactive, rather than reactive responses to human-coyote encounters and invest heavily in public engagement and education. Through the development, implementation, and regulation of non-lethal wildlife management policies, more cities and towns will be able to meet the needs of the stakeholders involved in coyote-human conflict while sparing the life of the animal.