Coyote study follows animals around Akron

July 6, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

TWINSBURG, Ohio

Biologists are undertaking a three-year project to track coyotes around the Akron area to learn more about the secretive animals.

The study comes at a time when coyotes are present in every Ohio county and some residents complain the animals are attacking pets more frequently.

Some research has been completed in the area, but many basic questions remain, said Michael Johnson, resource management manager for Summit County metro parks.

“How many are in a given park? What are their ranges? Where do they go? Are they healthy? What are their diets?” Johnson said.

Information about coyotes will increase awareness about the animals and their habits and could help park managers defuse human-coyote conflicts, he said.

The study started last year with the snaring of five coyotes that were equipped with radio collars.

Beth Wallace, 25, of Akron, a graduate student in biology at the University of Akron, tracks the coyotes during the day, when they generally sleep, by driving to the metro parks and picking up radio signals with a vehicle-mounted antenna.

Once a week, metro-parks biologist Marlo Perdicas and her team go into a field for an all-nighter to track the coyotes’ movements.

Teams are equipped with a radio antenna, a battery-powered receiver, a compass and a hand-held radio.

A resident coyote seems to cover a territory of up to 3.1 square miles, and transient coyotes might have a range of up to nearly 39 square miles, Perdicas said.

Larger parks may be home to as many as 20 coyotes, and smaller metro parks typically have five or six coyotes.

The Cuyahoga Valley park, by comparison, might have between 100 and 150 coyotes, officials estimate.

Coyotes are so common in Ohio now that Dayton International Airport employees used motor vehicles to try to chase the animals off runways in April.

The Summit Metro Parks project involves the University of Akron, the National Park Service, Cleveland Metroparks, the Norton-based nonprofit Wild4-Ever and Ohio State University.