Living with wildlife is just something we do, whether we’re waiting for turkeys to cross the road at UC Davis or watching a coyote trot across a field at dawn.
But as people and the built world expand into natural habitats, wild and domestic animals — including humans — are increasingly sharing the same spaces, with mixed results. Interactions with large carnivores tend to conjure the strongest feelings, from awe and wonder to fear and anxiety.
To explore how we can better coexist with our wild neighbors, we spoke with three UC Davis wildlife researchers studying coyotes, black bears and mountain lions in Ƶ. While each species is unique, people can employ common practices to coexist peaceably with local wildlife.
Risk in perspective
First, let’s put risk in perspective:
In the past 45 years in North America, two people have died from a coyote attack, compared to more than 40 deaths every year from domestic dog bites in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Since 1986, there have been 25 mountain lion attacks on people in Ƶ, four of which have been fatal, according to the Ƶ Department of Fish and Wildlife. In contrast, vehicles kill around 4,000 people a year in the state.
And black bears? “You’re more likely to be killed by a bee than by a black bear,” said Dan Ruka, a UC Davis master’s student in the Graduate Group in Ecology who is studying the impacts of wildfire on black bears in Lassen National Park. “The chances of being injured by a bear are approximately one in 2.1 million.”
So while conflict does happen, it is rare, and there are ways to avoid it.
the day and closer to sunrise, perhaps because they are constrained by avoiding male mountain
lions and not able to respond as strongly to recreation. © National Park Service
Mountain lions shift to coexist
Mountain lion researcher Ellie Bolas said the Santa Monica Mountains in southern Ƶ provide a blueprint for coexistence. There, mountain lions share space with 18 million people in the greater Los Angeles area, most of the time without incident. In fact, her recent study showed that mountain lions in the region are not only coexisting with humans, they are also actively shifting their schedules and becoming more nocturnal in places where people more frequently recreate.
“We increasingly don’t have a choice but to coexist,” said Bolas, a Ph.D. candidate in the UC Davis Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology. “Mountain lions in the LA area are trapped by the ocean, development and freeways. It’s a real testament to the people of greater LA that they are, by and large, tolerant and supportive of the wildlife. It’s also super impressive on the part of the wildlife that they’ve figured out how to make it work in an area where they encounter people every day.”
That said, people can help reduce the potential for conflict by being aware that dawn and dusk are prime times for mountain lion activity. T