Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:01:00] Where are you likely to come across a coyote in San Francisco?
Heather Knight [00:01:04] Increasingly, just about anywhere.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:01:07] Heather Knight is the San Francisco Bureau Chief for The New York Times.
Heather Knight [00:01:13] There are different packs that control the green spaces. So anywhere from Telegraph Hill, Coit Tower, to the Presidio, to Glen Canyon, to golf courses. That’s where they’re concentrated. But they’ve been getting more bold and they go out and explore the city. So you can see them walking up streets. One was found in a laundromat. Sam Altman found one in his backyard, lounging on patio furniture. So yeah, there’s about 100 of them now. I live in Glen Park, and I walk a lot in the canyon there and I see them. There are the warning signs up, and I saw one walking up and down a staircase there. They’re just like your neighbors, you say hi.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:01:59] You mentioned you see them in your own neighborhood and it sounds like just depending where you live and where you hang out they’re basically part of daily life here in a weird way.
Heather Knight [00:02:10] Yeah, people around the country who read my story could not believe that. It sounds so strange that these apex predators would just be out and about in a city, but they are.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:02:21] I mean, how would you describe people’s relationship to these coyotes in San Francisco?
Heather Knight [00:02:28] That’s where things are very divisive. Some people love them, they’ve become part of the culture in some ways. Some people love seeing them and consider it really cool that these wild creatures are just part of our city. They’re on murals now and there are talks at the libraries that just fill up like you can’t even get into them. They’re so popular. But then on the other hand people, especially those who have small dogs and walk them around the city, really do not like them. They can be very dangerous to small dogs especially those that are off leash and a number of them have been killed. They’ve also killed cats, so people with pets may feel differently than others.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:03:09] Stepping back a little bit, tell us about these coyotes and why are they in San Francisco? I mean, they’re native to California, right?
Heather Knight [00:03:16] Yes, they’re native to the West and they’re actually in cities around the country. Some have been spotted in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, but they really seem to be ubiquitous here in San Francisco. They were very widespread in the city in the early 1900s, but back then, they were considered kind of part of the Wild West that needed to be tamed, and so people were encouraged to actually shoot them on sight or poison them. There were bounties put out by the government, and so they were eradicated from San Francisco for about 75 years. But one of my favorite tidbits that I learned was that they came back to San Francisco about 2002, about 20, 25 years ago. The scientists were able to study their blood, and the DNA of the first arrivals back then actually do not match those to the south, the peninsula, Silicon Valley. Those coyotes are a different beast, apparently, and they actually more closely align with the DNA of those living in Marin County and beyond up north. And so scientists think that they came back by crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, just walked over. I don’t think they paid the toll, probably. And then the first one probably howled and brought others across with them. So then every spring more pups were born and now we have about a hundred.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:04:40] Are there any other theories about how these coyotes could have ended up back in San Francisco from the north?
Heather Knight [00:04:47] It’s possible that they swam, but that is more of a challenge, of course, than walking across the bridge, as probably we could relate to. But interestingly, I learned after publication that there is a family living on Angel Island. So it seems like those probably did swim over, although that’s a shorter swim, so more feasible, unless maybe they hopped aboard a ferry.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:05:10] I mean, I know you talked about this love-hate relationship that San Franciscans seem to have with these coyotes these days. And I know, you talked to a bunch of people. What are the range of feelings that you heard from folks about how they’re feeling about them these days?
Heather Knight [00:05:27] The scientists I talked to are very pro-coyote. They said, you know, you can’t do anything about them anyway. They’re going to be here as they proved they came back and repopulated. Some people say we should cull them, eradicate them again. But the scientists point out that would not work. They’re gonna come back. So there’s a lot of people who live in the city and think they’re majestic creatures. It’s kind a delightful little aspect of San Francisco that you see coyotes, you know, walking to your grocery store. Other people feel very differently, especially those who walk little dogs. I did interview a woman she talked about last fall walking her little eight pound pup at Chrissy Field and it is an off leash area although there were warning signs of coyotes. So she let her dog off leash but kept an eye on him and then a coyote came up and grabbed the dog in its mouth in front of her and ran off and she described screaming and chasing the coyote, eventually caught up to him and it was way too late for her dog. So to see that happen to your pet on a Saturday walk is pretty devastating, so obviously these emotions are strong.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:06:41] Yeah, that’s traumatic. And there’s been a couple of more high profile incidents involving these coyotes in recent years, right, that’s, I think, really leaving a bad taste in people’s mouths.
Heather Knight [00:06:54] Right. So for example, there was one incident at the Botanical Gardens in Golden Gate Park, I believe in the summer of 2024, where a five-year-old girl was bitten on the backside by a coyote and needed stitches. She was okay. But of course, that was traumatic as well. Federal agents came out and killed three members of that coyote family. But it turns out that the camp was held very close to a coyotes den and that it may be that adults were not keeping an eye on the children. And so there’s, you know, scientists are saying like, we need to better exist with these animals and be careful when we have little kids and little dogs in these wild spaces.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:07:32] You talked earlier about the city’s approach to coyotes back in the 1900s, and basically the approach being get rid of the coyotes, but how would you describe the city approach to the coyote these days?
Heather Knight [00:07:45] So now they have a policy where if a coyote kills a little dog, they just consider that kind of the circle of life. That is prey. And it’s just, it can be traumatic to see it, you know, in a city and kind of feel strange and devastating, but it is also natural. But if they do go after children, then that’s when they will take action and discuss what has happened with federal agents and jointly decide when coyotes need to be taken out. So that really aggressive coyote who had killed a number of dogs, the city wasn’t going to do anything about that. But when the coyote did lunge at a school trip of children at Chrissy Field, they decided that the coyotes had to be eradicated.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:08:42] Do we know whether San Francisco coyotes are in fact getting more aggressive? Like has their behavior changed over the years?
Heather Knight [00:08:59] Animal care and control gets reports about coyote behavior often. Usually they do not consider them super disturbing, but when that really aggressive coyote at Chrissy Field was killing dogs and lunged at the school children, they started getting up to 10 reports a day of just that one coyote and, you know, very disturbing, bold, overly aggressive behavior. I’ve never heard of a coyote attacking an adult. Most coyotes will never go after humans. That’s just not part of their behavior. But a few in recent years have become overly aggressive. The wildlife specialists and scientists said that one problem is humans. Some humans will actually hand feed coyotes, which is kind of insane. Like there’s been a few people who will bring trays of raw meat out to parks and just feed them. Far more often, humans are just careless, like they may be picnicking and leave food out near dens. Or trash cans, we see that all the time, are overflowing with food, or fishermen who use raw chicken as bait when they’re fishing in the bay may leave that out on docks. And so coyotes are getting accustomed to associating humans with food. And that is a huge problem behind all of this.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:10:18] It’s interesting. It sounds like, I mean, part of the problem is our relationship to the coyotes, actually.
Heather Knight [00:10:24] Right, so when this particular coyote was killed last fall, the Presidio Wildlife people actually got together and held a funeral for the coyote. They sang songs and spread flowers and they felt really devastated because this is a coyote family that lives in the Presidio, you know, well known to people who work there. They described it as a real failure on their part to not better educate the public and the failure of humans who are leaving far too much food out and kind of messing with the way coyotes naturally behave.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:11:05] And I mean, talking about the circle of life, we actually kind of need these coyotes too, right?
Heather Knight [00:11:12] Yes, so although pet owners can be very anti-coyote, which can be understandable, the scientists I talked to said that they’re actually really important to the ecology of San Francisco. They keep the rat population in check. And they also kill feral cats, which can protect birds. So there’s a lot of benefits to having the coyotes around.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:11:34] Yeah, I guess that’s why our streets don’t look like New York with the rats. Shout out to the coyotes. What would it look like to live in harmony with these coyotes, which as you’ve described are natural to this part of California. They’re important to our ecology. I mean, what do the people you talk with say when it comes to how we can live with these coyotes?
Heather Knight [00:11:57] Yeah, so they said the big thing is the food. Do not leave food scraps out and about. That’s probably just good behavior generally. But another issue is just to be better aware of what their behavior is. One behavior they have is called escorting. So if a parent coyote has babies in a den, they will be very protective of that space in the area around it. This has happened a lot at Bernal Hill where people will be walking their dogs and the coyotes appear to be very threatening. Their face looks threatening, their ears go back, they bare their teeth. But the scientists said that they’re just kind of trying to steer you away from the den and they’re not actually intending to hurt anyone or do anything other than make sure that you don’t get too close to their pups. They’re very big on keeping your little dogs on leashes, especially when you see signs posted. The city’s doing a better job of knowing where the coyotes are and posting those warning signs. So if you see that, even if you’d like your little dog to be able to run around, you know, better safe, then sorry. I was at an outdoor yoga class in Hellman Hollow yesterday and there were a lot of those signs posted but I saw a lot dog owners with little dogs letting them off leash and running around these signs warning of coyotes and I was just like oh gosh this yoga class could go very bad. Luckily it didn’t.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:13:20] I mean, other than, I guess, following these warning signs, are there any other precautions that pet owners are taking?
Heather Knight [00:13:27] Yeah, there’s a new dog accessory these days, which is a vest with spikes on it. Some look kind of construction worker vest orange vibes where others are more punk looking with like black vests and silver spikes. But a lot of dog owners are doing that because coyotes, you know, are not gonna want to grab something with spikes.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:13:51] What has the reader response been like to your story? You’re writing about San Francisco for the New York Times, and there’s a lot of people nationally talking about San Fransisco, but how are they feeling about the San Francisco Coyotes?
Heather Knight [00:14:04] We got a great response. It was really surprising to see how into this story people were, just really captivated by these amazing photos, somuch so that I wrote a follow-up piece describing how the photos were taken. So I got to interview Loren Elliott, the photographer, about how exactly he took these photos. He went out and heard a howl at Bernal Hill and found this coyote pretty early in the morning who was just stirring and he actually spotted it and he was able to take this just wonderful photo that really captured people’s attentions where the coyote is howling and his face is framed in sunlight and right outside the shadow is a car driving past and a woman jogging just feet from him. And when he saw that image on the little screen on his camera, he was like, “Oh, there’s something here. I’m going to keep going.”
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:15:03] Yeah, the images in the story are incredible, they’re really cool to look at. Well, Heather Knight from the New York Times, thank you so much for joining us on the show. I appreciate it.
