Coyotes aren't eating many pets in St. Albert but they are making a lot of poop, according to a visiting researcher from China.
Shibing Zhu, a research assistant from China's Heilongjiang Academy of Sciences, has spent the last three months studying coyotes in St. Albert – specifically, their droppings. Zhu's research, which wrapped up this week, was part of an ongoing effort by the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) to study the state of the Sturgeon River.
His analysis of coyote droppings found that the animals dined on shrews, weasels, squirrels, birds and fruit, but not cats or dogs.
"Coyotes are not dangerous to people," Zhu said, but might be a threat to really small pets.
Ongoing study
Zhu, 30, is a wildlife ecologist who is originally from Harbin, Edmonton's sister city in China. He is one of about six researchers who came to Edmonton in January as part of an exchange meant to provide field and English language experience, said St. Albert NAIT biologist Laurie Hunt.
While the others went to the University of Alberta (as they specialized in chemistry and microbiology), Zhu's expertise brought him to St. Albert. His main project has been the NAIT team's ongoing study of coyote migration.
"A couple of years ago, we were looking to see if coyotes were using the Sturgeon corridor to get through the city," explained Debbie Webb, a NAIT instructor who worked with Zhu. The team put Zhu to work on a new phase of the study.
Zhu said he patrolled St. Albert's ravines and natural areas in search of coyote scat, which was analyzed to determine the diets and movements of local coyotes.
He collected about 45 scat samples in his travels, about 40 of which were from coyotes. (The rest were from red foxes.) Most were firm and frozen, and all were full of bones and hair.
"Sometimes the samples really smell," he said, smiling.
Each sample was roasted in an autoclave to kill microorganisms before being washed, which transformed the dark logs into a wool-like mass, Zhu said.
He then picked out all the hairs and examined them under a microscope. The surface scales and internal structure of each hair allowed him to identify what the coyotes ate.
Zhu found the most scat samples around Riel Pond, but he also found samples all along the river corridor and in the river lots to the northeast. This suggests the coyotes are indeed using the river to get through town, he said.
There were no cat or dog hairs in the samples, Zhu said, suggesting the coyotes were not eating local pets. Similar studies in Calgary have found evidence of pet predation, he noted. Previous studies in St. Albert had found deer and cattle hairs in coyote scat, which were presumably from scavenged carcasses.
Coyotes are an important part of the Sturgeon's ecosystem, said Webb.
"If we didn't have coyotes, you'd have snowshoe hares overrunning the place," she said.
Too many coyotes, though, bring pet casualties and angry residents.
"The more development that goes on, the more crowded they're going to feel," Webb said of the coyotes.
Green areas are important for most wildlife, Zhu said.
"If the city can have wildlife living in its green areas, it is a sign that the environment of the city is very good."
APPLIED SCIENCE
Researcher Shibing Zhu hopes to use the techniques he's learned in St. Albert to study wolverines back in his native Harbin, China.
Harbin is a very big city (population: 4.8 million), with plenty of big buildings and far less green space than St. Albert, he said.
It's also in one of the few parts of China that has wolverines.
"The population of wolverines is quite small in China," Zhu said.
He and other researchers want to find out why their numbers have shrunk so much.
It's very tough to study wolverines as they tend to flee before people ever see them, Zhu said. Most current studies either focus on their tracks or use wire-covered trees baited with meat to sample their DNA.
"The wolverine will climb the tree to get the meat, and their hair will be on the wire," he said.
Zhu hopes to study wolverines in the same way he studied coyotes here - through their droppings.
