(SAN FRANCISCO) — It seems to be summer vacation for San Francisco’s coyotes, as one was spotted ditching the woods and taking to the city’s streets for a downtown stroll.
The coyote was captured on video in the city’s Laurel Heights neighborhood by Christian Calderon, who saw the animal on Euclid Avenue near Iris Avenue, according to ABC News affiliate, KGO.
The coyote was seen walking along a sidewalk and crosswalk for several minutes in Calderon’s video.
No reports of human or animal injuries have been made in connection to this coyote sighting.
This video may be shocking for some Americans, but for San Francisco, coyote sightings have become increasingly common.
According to Camilla Fox of Project Coyote, a national nonprofit organization based in Marin County that promotes coexistence between people and wildlife, coyotes live throughout San Francisco, and most of the city’s green spaces are likely to have coyotes within them.
“What’s most remarkable is that we don’t often see them, though we are coexisting with them. We only hear when there is a sighting or conflict,” Fox said in an interview with the San Francisco Department of Environment.
According to the department, coyotes maintain an important role in the area’s ecosystem, particularly by preying on different rodent species in the area.
This, Fox explained to the department, means that there are less rodenticides and other deadly poisons that kill “non-target animals.”
Nonetheless, spotting a coyote can be scary for the average person, and can pose a risk to pets.
In April, two pet owners lost their dogs to coyote attacks, both in the Corona Heights Park area, just a couple of miles from where a coyote was spotted in Laurel Heights on Wednesday.
The two attacks, happening a couple of weeks apart in the same area, happened quickly, while the owners were close to their animal, the San Francisco Chronicle said.
“It’s heartbreaking, and all the time it’s very similar stories of how it happened,” Deb Campbell, a spokesperson for San Francisco Animal Care and Control told the San Francisco Chronicle.
“A dog will be off-leash, or someone will let a dog out to pee off-leash, and there’s a coyote in the vicinity that will take it. It’s heartbreaking and preventable and we certainly wish that these things never happened,” Campbell added.
San Francisco Animal Care and Control has more information on how to avoid altercations with coyotes on their website.
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