Where do you live?

If you live in New York City, you know it’s a big place with 5 boroughs. The city is much more than the busy Time Square that most New Yorkers (including coyotes) avoid at all costs.  New York City is a city of parks: 13% of its land is covered with greenspace. It is possible to find quiet, out of the way bits of nature. That is where you may find a coyote.
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Most of this land is in the “outer” boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. As of now, its’ the wooded park land of the Bronx that the majority of NYC’s coyotes call home. Our coyotes - like most coyotes - seek out woods and fields, areas with few humans and plenty of natural prey.  The Bronx is also the only mainland borough and is attached to suburban Westchester County to the north. It’s easy for coyotes to get to the Bronx. The major waterways that separate the rest of the city from the mainland are probably the #1 reason we don’t see many coyotes in the rest of the city, but it’s probably only a matter of time before coyotes successfully reach new parts of our city and Long Island. That’s why our researchers and students from our affiliated high school programs  monitor our parks twice a year using camera “traps.” We’ll keep you posted if we find anything new. 

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The results of our first few years of camera trapping. Our 2nd author, Ms. Koestner, was a high school student in the Mianus River Gorge's Wildlife Technician Program at the time this work was conducted. Check out our News tab for a short summary of our findings.