Jefferson County Goes High Tech To Track Coyotes
JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo. (CBS4)- The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office is going high tech when it comes to tracking coyotes and their behavior.
"Coyotes have become a big issue within the past 8 to 10 years," said Jeffco Animal Control Manager Carla Zinanti. "Mainly for us it's people reporting their pets being attacked or killed by coyotes in the area."
The Jeffco Sheriff's Office wants to map the coyotes behavior that includes attacks on pets and encounters with people. They hope by keeping track, they can diminish those encounters.
There have been 15 attacks reported in the Denver metro area so far this year with one Littleton neighborhood reporting six attacks on pets by coyotes.
Animal control officers believe coyotes just aren't afraid of people anymore.
"In the cities, people just let them be and in fact they become habituated to people in their neighborhoods," said Zinanti.
The sheriff's office has started tracking coyote activity online and are marking them with easy to distinguish symbols.
"The pet attacks are marked with the red paw print and the sightings are the eye glasses and this would be an encounter," said Jeffco Community Outreach Manager Amber Luttrell.
The encounters are marked with a yellow dog head.
The idea is that anyone can look at the map and see if there has been any coyote sightings or problems in their neighborhood.
"Once they start eating pets that's a very plentiful and easily obtained food source," said Zinanti.
Jeffco Animal Control hopes they can limit the number of attacks and encounters in those areas if people have the resources they can access with their phone or tablet.
"Hopefully in the future we can address these areas with high level hazing," said Zinanti. "That would involve involve animal control officers or sheriff's deputies out there with air horns or paintball guns or something of the sorts to put fear back in these populations of coyotes."
LINKS: Jeffco Sheriff's Newsletter: Coyote Behavior | Coyote Tracking Map 2015
