Coyotes and more-than-human commons: exploring co-existence through Toronto’s Coyote Response Strategy

Urban Human–Coyote Conflicts: Assessing Friendliness as an Indicator of Coexistence

“…Over the last several hundred years coyotes have expanded their traditional range from the central US and Mexican prairies to the entire continental United States, Alaska, Canada, and into Central America; today, they have a presence in virtually every US city [ 41 , 42 ]. Although seeing signs of coyotes can be unnerving for urban populations, the species is considered a nuisance primarily because of the perceived risk of attack rather than infestation, disease, or property damage that lead other species to be considered pests.…”

“…A study out of Cape Town, South Africa, demonstrates that as much as 60 percent of the public’s tolerance of a species in an urban environment reflects their estimation of the risks and benefits the species brings [ 48 ]; as a result, municipal education efforts are often focused on highlighting coyotes’ potential benefits—like reducing the rodent population—while educating the public on how to reduce the risks and even transferring some of the causal story about the risk’s existence to human action. For example, when Toronto launched the Coyote Response Strategy, which focuses on coexistence and human behavioral change, it held community meetings, developed park signage, and created a website to educate the public about coyotes and the plan [ 41 ] while also making clear that the public was responsible for protecting their families and pets from their coyote cohabitants in common spaces [ 49 ].…”

Edible Garden Cities: Rethinking Boundaries and Integrating Hedges into Scalable Urban Food Systems

“…Many official planning processes and design interventions are coming to recognize the significance of more-than-human agency [3,4]. For example, wildlife corridors, incorporating fruit-bearing trees, shrubs and hedgerows, log-piles for microfauna, nesting boxes for indigenous bats and birds of prey, retained/restored wetlands for reptiles and amphibians, hedgehog houses, insect hotels, pet-friendly infrastructures and so on have recently become intimately woven into planning discourses and the marketing of new developments [5] 2 .…”

“…Indeed, investigating the diverse ways in which certain animals and plant species constitute active, 'lively' resources helps to soften dominant 'hylomorphic' intrusions into urban landscape. Developing this perspective can inform planning processes and design interventions which better acknowledge how different species align with, evade or directly challenge human-centred models of contemporary urban renewal that emphasize the importance economic exchange in facilitating development [3][4][5].…”

Beyond Tolerance: Mitigating Human–Wildlife Conflict with Hospitality

“…A process of organization will require multiple formal and informal channels and relations that recast hospitality as part of a large-scale reinforcing process of sincere welcoming, care, and support [68], and interdependence. Broadly, this normalization process will entail shifting responsibility to humans to modify their behavior to help keep wildlife invisible where it is ideal or essential, learning about what wildlife want and need, and ensuring they are not harmed for being themselves [27,98]. Though our obsession with wildlife obfuscates our need to confront our biases [65], practical solutions we can pursue today include adopting wildlife-friendly planning (e.g., wildlife corridors); altering our daily vocabulary [99]; rethinking the concept of home [100]; programs that mature human decision making [101]; depowering human deference to conditional hospitality and violence when refusing to normalize human-wildlife interactions that have been deemed problematic when they are not [27,65]; and governance designed to cultivate social and institutional value systems that are ecosystem-and wildlife-friendly over status quo arrangements moored to human mastery over Nature [54,102].…”