Coyotes have expanded into urban and suburban areas across North America, creating both coexistence opportunities and conflicts with welfare implications for individual animals and communities.
Urban coyotes face distinctive welfare challenges from the environments they inhabit. Secondary rodenticide poisoning from consuming poisoned rodents causes internal hemorrhaging and a slow, painful death in affected animals. Vehicle strikes are a primary mortality cause in urban environments. Coyotes that become habituated to human presence through intentional or accidental feeding are at elevated risk of conflict and subsequent lethal removal. From a welfare perspective, coexistence approaches that maintain appropriate coyote wariness through hazing while removing the poisoning threat represent the highest-welfare urban wildlife management strategy. Urban coyotes that maintain natural behaviors and fear of humans typically coexist successfully with minimal conflict.