Aggressive coyote killed in Cape Breton Highlands National Park

Parks Canada staff have shot and killed one of the coyotes that chased cyclists in Cape Breton Highlands National Park last week, but say another is still at large.

Staff say the animal that was killed was the one that approached and chased people on the west side of the park in the MacKenzie Mountain area. It was shot on Friday.

But the search is still on for another aggressive coyote in the Green Cove area, where trails have been shut down during the pursuit. Parks Canada says the coyote has been shot at, but got away.

Erich Muntz, a resource conservation manager for Parks Canada, said the searches are focused on areas where coyotes are known to be.

“It involves driving slowly and pausing, looking at certain areas where we have seen coyotes in the past,” Muntz said.

“Coyote scat is quite common along the road and it’s concentrated in certain areas. There [are] definitely corridors or pathways that they use to access certain places, so we kind of focus on those known hotspots.”

Decision to kill coyotes ‘not taken lightly’

Muntz said staff believe people are feeding the coyote in Green Cove.

He anticipates there will be more information on Monday. In the meantime, he said staff are setting traps that could result in more parts of the park being closed off.

“We just don’t go into details about traps because we’ve had vandalism, theft … and it’s a very expensive operation. So, we just close off general areas,” he said.

Killing coyotes is a decision “not taken lightly,” Muntz said.

He said if there is an attack, someone is physically hit or harmed or there is contact made “then that is a trigger for us to follow up and try to remove that animal from the population so that further incidents can’t happen.”