A New Day for Old Predators?

by Craig Vetter

It is an exciting time for wildlife biologists. A series of sightings and confirmed reports, supported by tracking studies, suggest that larger carnivores once on the brink, such as coyotes, cougars, wolves, and bobcats, are expanding beyond their historical reservations and back toward urban areas such as Chicago. Some species have already set up shop here, while others may only be passing through. But the world these animals are returning to is very different from the one they were pushed from more than a century ago. In a landscape where the auto has replaced the bison, the animals are adapting in some surprising ways. But how will we adapt to them?

Naturalist Jack MacRae talked about the burgeoning numbers of wild animals as he walked me past cages of rescued avian predators including hawks, eagles, and owls at Willowbrook Wildlife Center in Glen Ellyn. In one enclosure, a small feline face peeked at us from a plywood box. “That’s a bobcat,” he said. “I remember when in 1976 a bobcat was found dead on the road in Barrington Hills, and it blew everyone’s minds. To me, back then, it was as strange as the Chicago cougar. Now we have bobcats in all but one Illinois county. And it’s going that way for many of the other predators that used to be rare to the point of extirpation. When I was growing up, coyotes were a thing of the West. Now we treat up to 20 coyotes a year and they’re all over the city in Chicago. These days, suburbia offers them almost as much habitat as the forest preserves.”

The changes MacRae has seen in 30 years of work in the Chicago region reflect a shift many of us also may sense. For the past hundred years or so, urbanites have gone about life secure in the knowledge that the larger, more dangerous predators no longer moved among us. These days, many of us even support saving the wolf, polar bear, and cougar — in the abstract, and in the wilderness, somewhere out there.

But what if our efforts to let predators be, preserve wild lands, and restore a natural equilibrium somehow caused an actual cougar to wander into a North Side Chicago neighborhood? The rare and astounding appearance of a mountain lion in a city alleyway — as happened last April, when police shot one dead in Roscoe Village — is emblematic of larger questions creeping into notions of ecological balance: Is the reappearance of alpha predators on the urban landscape more than a fluke? Might some species have a place here? And depending on that answer, how shall we deal with them?

“That’s the 64,000 dollar question,” says Stan Gehrt, an Ohio State University wildlife biologist and senior scientist at the Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation in Dundee. “It’s looking like these larger predators are adapting to human population to a much greater degree than we originally thought they could. Where the endpoint is we don’t really know because it’s an ongoing experiment that we don’t have control over. We do know that they are consistently pushing their own boundaries and their tolerance to human activity. It’s true for most wildlife, which is, through necessity and adaptability, living among people now more than ever.”

That adaptability is showing itself in several ways. In some places at least, coyotes are acting more like wolves, in that they form packs more frequently in urban areas than in open territory. And because of higher deer population density around the city, they have begun to prey on deer fawns more heavily.

Coyotes are the largest common wild predators in the region and have become surprisingly comfortable in our dense urban midst. “We have a patchwork of territories — small green spaces including parks and even railroad easements — spread like a quilt over the city,” says Gehrt, “and when any of these become available, coyotes are using them.” For the most part they move invisibly among us, and when they do reveal themselves, the stories are usually more comical than threatening. In 2007, a coyote wandered casually into a downtown sandwich shop where it lingered passively until animal control officers trapped and took it away. A less successful chase through Lincoln Park lasted for hours before the trail was lost on the grounds of the Cardinal’s mansion.

“Wolves are doing well in Wisconsin, and as long as that’s true, there’s a great possibility we may get these occasional stragglers.”

— Mike Redmer, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

“There’s no question that predator presence in the city is becoming more of an issue,” says Gary Glowacki, a wildlife biologist with the Lake County Forest Preserves. “And the coyote is a perfect example of how these things sneak up on us. Their great adaptability has seen their population kind of explode over the last ten years.”

In fact, the coyote baby boom of the late 1990s in Cook County provoked the largest study of urban coyotes to date in the world. Authored by Gehrt and a team working with Max McGraw, around 200 radio-collared coyotes were tracked for six years. Results have suggested that as many as 2,000 coyotes may be making a good living in the county and that their presence as keystone predator is far more beneficial than dangerous. Only five of the collared coyotes have been removed as nuisances, and there have been no reports of coyotes biting humans in Cook County. (Compare that to 3,000 dog bites reported most years.) The coyotes’ main diet of voles and other small mammal pests has had a significant effect on rodent control, and, to some extent, on the overpopulation of white-tailed deer. They have even been credited with checking the growth of Canada goose flocks that burgeoned in the 1980s. A recent videotape study found coyotes raiding goose nests for eggs.

“They’re an important part of the ecosystem,” says Glowacki, “and we definitely don’t want them gone.”

Among those who reportedly agree with that sentiment are the unnamed nuns who tend the garden at the Cardinal’s home. They were said to have been pleased that the Lincoln Park coyote remained on the loose to keep their vegetable patch free of the rabbits that had otherwise been pillaging it.

Whether the new prevalence of the coyote is a harbinger of the return of alpha predators like the wolf and even the cougar is an open question. Each has different habitat needs and hunting and breeding behaviors. But wolves, too, are showing some of the same flexibility as coyotes. Some researchers posit that it may just be a matter of time before various species “figure out” how to change in order to prosper closer to the cities.

“The old wolf models that created territorial maps that predicted which parts of the states were suitable for wolves aren’t working anymore,” says Gehrt. “Wolves are doing things that we didn’t think they could 15 or 20 years ago. Through necessity, or through their adaptability, they are living among people more frequently now than ever. They are evidently establishing territories in parts of some states that have high road density. They’re figuring out how to cross roads. And ironically, in maximizing green space as we have over the last 20 years, we’ve actually been providing the larger carnivores a toehold into the urban landscape.”

Despite the fact that there have been only six confirmed reports of wolves in Illinois over recent years, wildlife managers expect that their presence in Wisconsin under a state wolf recovery program may increase their presence here.

“Wolves are close, a lot closer than the Black Hills where the cougar came from,” says U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Mike Redmer. “There have been reports of wolves being heard regularly on the outskirts of northern Milwaukee. We had one killed near the Chain O’ Lakes [in northern Illinois] in 2005. They’re big animals and they can move a long way, but the sense among wildlife biologists is that the open space we have now around Chicago will not be able to support breeding populations of the larger predators. But wolves are doing well in Wisconsin, and as long as that’s true there’s a great possibility that we may get these occasional stragglers.”

The ultimate occasional straggler, if it can be called that, was Chicago’s cougar, an animal that had genetic roots in the Black Hills of South Dakota, a young male looking for a mate that hunted its way through flourishing deer herds, along waterways, through woods and parks, and across highways in as many as six states before it was shot in a North Side alley.

Cougar experts were not astounded by the distance of the young male’s trek. “Cougars don’t like boundaries,” says Brooks Fahy, founder of the Predator Defense Institute, headquartered in Eugene, Oregon. Fahy has been working hands-on with cougars for 30 years. “I’ve seen how far they can travel, and it’s fascinating that they are trying to reclaim some of their historic territory. It’s nothing we should be fearful of. Instead we should embrace it. It’s a test of our commitment to bringing back the balance that’s been lost.”

That balance is the key question for local wildlife ecologists. Take an animal away, especially a top predator, and the ecosystem changes. Humans have removed some influential animals: cougar, wolf, bear, deer, bison, elk, and others. In the case of deer, we’ve seen how strongly a returning species can impact the land. The species that reestablish themselves beyond the occasional loner will shift the balance again.

“Bobcats are moving toward the Chicago area,” says McRae. “I don’t think they’ll ever get near coyote numbers in the city, but they’ve greatly expanded their range in the state.”

“I expect bobcats not only to make an appearance in the Chicago area,” says Gehrt, “but to establish themselves to a certain degree. They do need large wild areas to retreat into on the edge of the cities as they have around Los Angeles in the mountain canyons. There are several large forest preserves around Chicago which may allow them to use the city in some of the same ways they’re using L.A. I expect they’ll definitely be pushing up against Chicago and trying to make it work.”

Bobcats and coyotes — medium-sized, furtive animals that subsist mainly on small animals (and even grass and fruit) — may be the kind of predators that can integrate into Chicago Wilderness and bring added function to the food chain.

Though some downplay it, even bears could enter the picture. “Black bears have already decided that they can move into metro areas,” says Gehrt, “and it’s just a matter of time until they come back to Chicago. We’re seeing it in Ohio and the first sign of their resurgence were sightings in the Cleveland suburbs. We now have between 100 and 150 bears in the state.”

But what about cougars? How much of that historic territory can we give back to a predator with a record, however rare, of attacking human beings? As a matter of public safety, won’t we really be forced to shoot or relocate them all?

“That’s a legitimate question,” says Gehrt. “The cold, hard truth is that it’s not easy to hunt down or trap mountain lions. In fact, it’s pretty hard. And they’re serving a role in an ecosystem that has been out of whack in and around the cities for a long time. They can have an effect on the overabundance of white-tailed deer, which are a major problem for property damage and even death. There are many, many more people killed in auto collisions with deer than will ever be killed by cougars. Still, the only time we hear about the large predators is when they’re in conflict with people, which means that any suggestion for management programs will have to deal with public fear.”

“I’ve seen how far cougars can travel, and it’s fascinating that they are trying to reclaim some of their historic territory.... it’s a test of our commitment to bringing back the balance that’s been lost.”

— Brooks Fahy, Predator Defense Institute

“The fear is not much different than 100 years ago, “ says Clay Neilsen, head of the Cougar Network, an organization that documents confirmed sightings of the big cats’ presence outside their traditional western range. “Dealing with that fear comes down to educating people about how to live with these animals, and it would be a daunting effort in terms of both time and money. So far, plans to manage the growing predator population have been handled state to state, so there’s no grand strategy yet. But it’s an exciting time for wildlife biologists,” says Nielsen. “I’m 36 years old, relatively new to the field, and the generation before me dealt with a very low abundance of game species. But we’ve had wonderful success bringing the game back and now we’ve decided to manage, to protect the predator species in the same way rather than to get rid of them. They’re coming back, and it is indeed very interesting.”

As for a grand strategy, the beginning may be in the air. “Up to now there’s been no single, cohesive group dealing with predator management,” says Gehrt. “But we’re working to change that. We are about to publish a book called Urban Carnivores, for which we invited 18 biologists to contribute chapters on what we know about individual animals like bobcats, coyotes, and cougars …. And there are discussions of what’s likely to happen in the future and what reactive and proactive plans might be effective. It’s time to consider all these things, because we’ve paid a price not having these animals