Information and stories about San Francisco coyotes: behavior & personality, coexistence & outreach, by Janet Kessler: Unveiling first-hand just how savvy, social, sentient and singular coyotes really are!
Collage showing coyotes feeling at home in San Francisco. Cities have become natural habitats for them, along with mountains, beaches, deserts, ranches, farms, riparian corridors.
Many people assume “coyotes in their natural environment” means anywhere far from humans. But when not persecuted, coyotes have long lived near people — and benefited from it. As anthropologist Malcolm Margolin notes in The Ohlone Way, Indigenous peoples coexisted with coyotes well before Westerners arrived in America.
Coyotes are extraordinary opportunists. They’ve adapted to nearly every habitat and climate — from scorching deserts to frozen tundra, from ranches and farms to beaches, mountains, riparian corridors and cities. All of these are natural habitats for them.
Their troubles began with Western expansion and the cattle industry, when humans started slaughtering both wolves and coyotes. Wolves were wiped out, and coyotes expanded their range — but were branded as vermin and hunted relentlessly. Even today, they’re often shot on sight or killed in contests. Ironically, hunters blame coyotes for deer loss, though humans take far more deer, including the healthiest bucks, while coyotes mostly target the weak or sick (among others, see Coyote America by Dan Flores).
As ecological awareness and humane thinking have grown, people began questioning this persecution. In cities — where guns are now banned — coyotes have found relative safety. Food prey is abundant in the form of rodents of all types, particularly gophers, birds, opossums, skunks, raccoons, vegetation of all types, bugs and lizards, and about half their diet here in San Francisco comes from human refuse (see Tali Caspi). For coyotes, as for us, city life is about convenience.
Some argue coyotes don’t belong in cities, citing car strikes, mange, or dog conflicts. Yet outside cities, life can be harsher, with predators like mountain lions and humans adding to the risks. There’s no law — or scientific reason — saying coyotes don’t belong here: that’s simply wishful thinking on their part. In truth, they’ve always belonged wherever they can survive.
Thank you, Janet. Those are wonderful photographs! The Ohlone Way was a very interesting read that I just finished this year, and is a must-read for anyone living in the Central part of CA.
About My Site and Me: This website reflects my almost 20 years of intense, careful, and dedicated field-work — empirical observations — all photo-documented without interfering or changing coyotes’ behaviors. Be welcome here, enjoy, and learn! I am a self-taught naturalist and independent coyote researcher.
Coyotes reappeared in San Francisco in 2002 after many years of absence, and people are still in the dark about them. This site is to help bring light to their behavior and offer simple guidelines for easy coexistence.
My information comes from my own first-hand observations of our very own coyotes here in San Francisco. What I’m presenting to you is the reality of their everyday individual lives. They have not been studied or observed so thoroughly by anyone else. Mine is not generic information, nor second-hand.
Note that none of the coyotes I document and photograph is “anonymous” to me: I know (or knew) each one of them, and can tell you about their personalities, histories, and their family situations. There have been over 100 of them, distributed among over twenty families, all in San Francisco. Images and true stories have the power to raise awareness and change perspective.
Oct 29, 2025 @ 21:47:25
Thank you, Janet. Those are wonderful photographs! The Ohlone Way was a very interesting read that I just finished this year, and is a must-read for anyone living in the Central part of CA.
Oct 29, 2025 @ 22:22:19
Thanks, Lance!! Warmly, Janet
Oct 29, 2025 @ 22:16:32
I love Coyotes!!!