Territories in SF, Spring 2024

San Francisco Coyote Territories, Spring 2024: update. This map needs my permission for reproduction, including for content. It’s based entirely on my own first-hand and original field observations. The underlying map is a ©GoogleMap.

I’ve been studying and documenting coyote behavior and family life — including their interactions with pets and people — for the last seventeen years, since 2007. About nine years ago I also began more fully studying their population: it’s numbers, structure, distribution, and dynamics here in San Francisco, including some of their dispersals.

In 2021 I created a rough map of the 17 territories I had seen, and, allowing for a margin of error, I surmised there were about 20 of these territories in total within the city limits of San Francisco. See my methods. The map shows how the population is divided and situated into discrete family units on distinct territories, with fairly exact borders. The territories average about two square miles each — they are about the size of the Presidio which in fact constitutes one of the territories claimed by one family. This is less than half the size of a territory in the wild, due overwhelmingly to the abundance of food resources in the city as compared to rural areas.

Here is my Spring, 2024 updated version of the map, along with some changes that occurred over the past 3 years, including at least five more territories that I know only incompletely. So we have over 20 territories here in San Francisco that cover the entirety of the city except downtown.

Only one coyote family and no other coyotes lives on any of these territories, with token anomalies. The families consist always of a reproducing alpha mated pair: these are the actual *owners* of the territories and they constitute the *core* of the family. Then in addition, there are usually several yearlings — born the previous year or two — who range in age from one to almost three years — they will soon disperse. In some families, all the yearlings have dispersed, no yearlings remain behind. The yearlings that stay help care for the new litter of pups and move on out sometime afterwards. So if we count these yearlings as adults, the adults number from two to five related individuals in each family on each territory

So parent-pairs own vast territories and keep others out, thereby limiting the population to just their own families, per 2 square mile areas. This is what their territoriality is about. Having said this, it’s important to know that NOTHING is 100% when it comes to coyotes, something that has been emphasized to me by Walkaboutlou. For example, we’ve had an interloper loner who has been living on the periphery of others’ territories for several years. He’s crippled and old, and possibly for this reason he has been allowed to live there by resident coyotes. Also, unusually, ONE of the territories this year was claimed by two different families: I tend to think this is a temporary situation, but we’ll have to wait and see. And I’ve seen an injured dispersing youngster harbored and warmly cared for by another family for two weeks until he healed enough to move on. So there are ANOMALIES now and then within the single-family-unit standard which normally keeps other coyotes out.

The reproducing alpha pair generally remain as *owners* of their claimed territory for many years — I’ve seen the same territory claimed for 15 years and running by the same family, generationally. For example, I’ve documented a mated pair passing on the territory to one of their offspring in a couple of instances when they themselves moved out. Eventually, of course, all yearlings leave UNLESS it’s the parents who end up leaving and ceding their territories to one of their offspring: this appears to occur with older mated pairs, but I’ve also seen older pairs remain and produce litters up to 11 years of age. And I’ve also seen territories abandoned, lock-stock-and-barrel, leaving an empty niche for any newcomer to just walk in and claim the territory. This yearlings-plus-parent population — those that are full grown or close to it — number about 90-100 in the city. This is our core population, with pups then added in April. In April is when our population in the city is at its highest, but like a breathing bellows, it eventually shrinks back down to basically that alpha pair with some of those yearlings remaining a little while longer before dispersing.

That covers the adults and near-adults. In addition to the parents and yearlings, then, new pups are born in early April here in San Francisco. Litter sizes range from one to seven with a fairly low survival rate. Those who survive will grow to become the yearlings the following year, all of whom will eventually disperse, with a few remaining with their birth families for a season or even two to help when the new pups are born. Most yearlings disperse sometime in their second year, but I’ve seen it occur as early as 9 months, and as late as three years. They are either driven out by a parent and/or sibling, or they just pickup and leave when their time-clocks tell them it’s time to go. As they disperse, which can occur at any time of the year, many get killed by cars — cars are their chief killers in urban areas. In fact, in 2021, 24 coyotes were picked up off the streets of San Francisco killed by cars.

The federally run Presidio radio-collared fifteen coyotes over a three year span beginning in 2015, and an additional one was radio-collared in 2019. From these collars, the researcher found that most of the dispersing coyotes seem to move south and out of the city, and of those, most get killed by cars: of the fifteen coyotes that were tagged and radio-collared during that three year time span, all were killed by cars except one. Again, the population in San Francisco has remained fairly stable within each of the seventeen exclusively owned territories — one family and one anomalie.We do have a few more territories than we had in 2015.

These territories have also remained fairly stable in size and boundaries over the years, such as the Presidio, but I’ve also seen some big changes in some of them. For example, the San Francisco Golf Course and the Olympic Club were two separate territories with two separate families for many years. Then, several years ago, the territories merged into one very large territory for a number of years with one family claiming it all. Now, we are back to two separate territories, with the second territory now owned by a daughter of the family in the other.

The Glen Canyon/Laguna Honda/Twin Peaks territory for many years was claimed by one and the same family. Beginning in March of this year, 2024, another family is sharing that space, but separate parts of it. As I said, I believe this is a temporary situation, but we’ll just have to wait and see!

Several years ago, the Bernal family expanded their territory across Alemany Blvd. to include some of McLaren Park. So there were two families living in close proximity to each other there, with each keeping to their own side of a divide which they maintained through scent marking . But this year, the family in McLaren made sure to keep the Bernal family out of there. My take is that the Bernal family had ties to the McLaren family several years ago through the alpha male who appears possibly to have been born there. So he was allowed to live close by. But he disappeared two years ago, and the family without him, but with a new alpha male, is not allowed in: the McLaren alpha male was seen driving out the Bernal alpha female.

In 2018 the Buena Vista family moved, lock-stock-and-barrel, to Lake Merced, leaving their Buena Vista territory to a son who soon found a young mate who didn’t produce pups until the next year when she turned two. The relocated parents at Lake Merced then had the first *divorce* I had ever seen: humans feeding him constantly drew him away from his mate, so she found a more attentive new mate. The rejected male returned to Buena Vista where he was allowed to stay for two months by his son. This displaced father coyote then moved on to Golden Gate Park for a year before he was shot and killed by the city for bearing his teeth to a child in his denning area.

And I’ve written about the changes that have been occurring in Golden Gate Park: how the Western family has been pushing their boundary eastward, squeezing and pushing the Eastern family farther east.

Each row of images below depicts what a coyote family consists of in early Spring: each row constitutes a single nuclear family before the new pups were born. These are about HALF of the families within the city limits of San Francisco. Dispersal, of course, continues throughout the year, so it’s important to know that changes in families are constant. Pups were born in early April will continue to grow through their first year and then they, too will disperse or remain for a year or even two years with their birth families before either moving on, or acquiring the territory they were born on. I have not included all 20 of the families in these photos because most are very similar to these, and in several of the territories, I have not *catalogued* each individual member for those families.

An aside here. I don’t identify coyotes by their locations for their own protection, not just from feeders and poisoners, but from the City itself which has used my sight to identify coyotes they’ve taken out (per their records, “We used her site to identify the coyote”, in their own words). And they’ve done this a number of times, not understanding how powerful coyote defensive denning behavior is. And, by the way, I give the coyotes I know names I can pronounce and remember, not numbers. Mine is the longest running study of San Francisco coyotes, begun in 2007, and the only one which has put together their population numbers, territories, and individuals within those families.

I use no attachment gadgets or lures. Mine is a totally “hands off” effort. Human presence is omnipresent, so my presence is simply part of what is already there and which urban coyotes all have to deal with. I keep my distance and never interact or interfere in any way which might alter a coyote’s natural behaviors.