WATCH: Coyotes take over Vaughan driveway as residents say problem ‘out of control’

Surveillance footage captured a pack of coyotes sharing a meal in the driveway of a home in the Thornhill area in Vaughan.

Vaughan residents are voicing concern over a growing number of coyote incidents, some involving pets and young children, and are calling on the city to take action.

“It’s out of control,” said Lee-att Shemesh, who lives in the area of Bathurst Street and Clark Avenue.

While there have been coyote incidents across the city, the problem seems to be most concentrated in the Thornhill area. Of the 386 coyote sightings in Vaughan so far this year, 240 have been in Ward 5, according to the city. There were 315 sightings in the ward in all of 2024 and just 77 in 2023.

Shemesh said coyotes have visited her yard on multiple occasions recently, with some of those incidents captured on video.

“I was just starting to prepare breakfast and lunches, and then I heard a lot of barking. I hear something going on. I look out the window, where I see a coyote standing right outside my kitchen window,” she recalled.

Video from her home surveillance system shows three coyotes running up and down the outside of the fence, while another camera catches one of them finding a way in through a narrow gap and attempting to snatch the small barking dog.

“One was actually smart enough – because I actually saw them on all the cameras – he actually ran back to the front of the house, around to the other side and came into the backyard through a five-inch gap between two fences,” Shemesh said.

Just days ago a coyote turned up in her yard again, this time while her 10-year-old daughter was playing there.

“He was hiding. My daughter was on the deck with my dog. I was just kind of in and out, and the coyote was sitting and waiting for an opportunity to get to my daughter or get to the dog,” she said.

Shemesh, who moved to the neighbourhood from a more rural area a few months ago, said she’s never had problems with wildlife like this before.

“We would see coyotes, every now and then a fox, but we’ve never actually had them come close to the house,” she said.

Now, she said, she’s scared to walk her dog in the area. If she does, she carries a baseball bat, pepper spray and a bear horn.

“I look like I’m going to war,” she said, calling the situation “a disaster.”

She said she’s worried some of her neighbours might start taking things into their own hands if the city doesn’t do more and added it’s not fair she isn’t able to use her backyard out of fear for her family’s safety.

Revi Laufer has lived in the area for years and said coyotes used to be spotted “once in a blue moon,” but the problem has grown steadily worse over the past five years or so.

“Pets have been killed, and parents are terrified of having their kids walking to and from school because kids have been chased. It’s a problem,” she said. “People don’t sit in their backyards anymore.”

Laufer said she’s taken to driving her small dog to out-of-area parks for walks so they avoid running into coyotes.

“They’re all over. It’s gotten really out of hand,” she said.

Coyote pack caught on cam in driveway

Video captured in the area recently and provided to CP24 highlights the problem. In it, a pack of at least eight or nine coyotes is seen fighting over a meal – possibly a small animal – in a driveway.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Vaughan Mayor Steven Del Duca said at a working session of council Wednesday, referring to the video. “I’ve never experienced in all of my years living in Vaughan, separate and apart from being mayor, the number of residents who are telling us that they have actually had their household pets injured or, in some cases, killed.”

The city adopted a coyote strategy in 2022 that focused on public education. Staff said that while coyote sightings have increased since then, they still believe the program is working.

But Ward 5 Coun. Gila Martow said she wants to see the city doing more.

At Wednesday’s meeting she moved a motion to have city staff explore the possibility of hiring qualified licensed trappers to deal with coyotes in problem areas, as some other Ontario municipalities have done.

The motion passed and staff are expected to report back to council on the move next week.

Speaking with CP24, Martow likened the solution to that employed by the City of Toronto to deal with two problem coyotes in Liberty Village.

“I want to deal with it before there’s tragic circumstances,” Martow said.

York Regional Police confirmed that officers attended at least two incidents in York Region this summer for reports of children bitten by coyotes. One of those incidents occurred on Aug. 16 near Clarke Avenue and Springfield Way in Ward 5, where residents have been reporting the bulk of the sightings.

A pet owner herself, Martow said she loves animals and doesn’t want to see coyotes harmed unnecessarily. But she said many residents are frustrated and at their wit’s end.

Moving coyotes not a good option: experts

Experts say the problem is complex, with new coyotes moving into an area if another is removed.

Dr. Brent Patterson, a research scientist with Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, told council Wednesday that it makes no sense to capture and move coyotes unless you’re taking them a considerable distance away.

“If they chose to, they might be back where you originally caught them from before the crew that made the move was home having their dinner,” he said. “So 10 or 15 kilometres (for) a coyote is something that they could start to navigate, probably in a day or less.”

Even so, he said, the coyotes could just become a problem in the place where they’re moved, and new coyotes could move into the area where they were removed from.

Provincial regulations generally require that wildlife not be released more than one kilometres away from their capture site.

“As far as we know, most of the landscape in Ontario is occupied by existing territorial family groups of coyotes or wolves, depending on where you put them. And so you’re probably going to be putting them into somebody else’s home or territory, and you could create some strife that way,” he said. “So for those primary reasons, and some others as well, we generally don’t view relocation as being a tool that we really want to have in the toolbox when it comes to resolving that conflict.”

Lesley Sampson of Coyote Watch Canada told council Wednesday that even if you do move a coyote, new ones may move in as quickly as a few months later.

“There’s scent trails that are left behind by individual coyotes. So new coyotes that are dispersing will follow those scent trails,” she said.

Dealing with the problem, Sampson said, should involve an examination of the landscape in Ward 5 and an assessment of possible food sources that humans might be unwittingly making available to coyotes.

“What makes Ward 5 unique? What brings wildlife to this area? And so looking at the uniqueness of the landscape, and then the availability of what’s already there naturally, the food sources, and then maybe folks that need more guidance in terms of how they might encourage unwillingly or unknowingly, wildlife to visit their backyards,” she said.

City staff said the most effective way to deal with the problem is to double down on “coexistence strategies” such as educating the public, proactive monitoring and working with local stakeholders.

While the problem is difficult, Del Duca said he wants residents to know that he is listening.

In a statement to CP24, he said he knows residents are feeling “exhausted and frustrated by the problem and that’s why he requested the item be added to the agenda Wednesday, and why he seconded Martow’s motion to have staff report back on hiring trappers.

“We recognize this is a very serious issue – one we do not take lightly. My council colleagues and I will continue to work with city staff to solve this problem,” Del Duca said.

Have you had trouble with coyotes in your area? If the problem got better, what changed? If not, how have you been impacted?

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