Officials, experts emphasize rarity of recent SF coyote attack

A coyote bit a 5-year-old girl just before 11:30 a.m. on June 28, during a summer-camp visit to the San Francisco Botanical Garden.

U.S. Agriculture Department trappers, working alongside California Department of Fish and Wildlife officials, shot and killed three coyotes in the garden during the subsequent weekend. DNA testing conducted Monday identified one of the killed coyotes as the animal that bit the child.

Captain Patrick Foy, a member of CDFW’s law enforcement division , said it was important to remember that a wild animal attacking a person is “a pretty rare event.”

“It’s something that garners widespread media attention, because when a person is bitten by a domestic dog, that happens so often that people don’t really pay as much attention,” he added.

There were six coyote attacks in the state throughout June, according to the CDFW. Five were in Southern California, while San Francisco’s incident was the first and only incident in Northern California.

“Considering the state of California is about 39 million people, the probability of being attacked by a coyote is still very low,” Foy said. “You have a much greater chance of being attacked by a domestic dog than you would a coyote.”

On Monday, forensic scientists with the CDFW matched the DNA from the attack victim’s bite wounds to one of the coyotes that was euthanized over the weekend. Foy said that rabies test results were not yet available, as that is being handled by a separate agency and takes several days.

Deb Campbell, a spokesperson for San Francisco Animal Care and Control , said the nature of the Botanical Garden attack made it an especially rare occurrence.

“There hasn’t been a bite to a human without a dog involved in San Francisco,” Campbell said. “Sometimes people do get injured or bitten in a scuffle when a coyote is going after their dog.”

Campbell added that if people live near a coyote area or hear about an area with coyotes, they should avoid the area or take precautions like keeping their dogs on leashes.

“If you see a coyote, go the other way,” she told The Examiner. “But always keep your dog on leash in situations like that. Good safety on any day of the week is to keep your dogs on leash.”

Janet Kessler, a San Francisco resident who has been documenting and observing coyotes in The City for the past 17 years, said that last week’s incident did not mark changing behaviors for the local coyote population.

“It’s very natural, protective denning behavior. It is not random aggressive behavior,” she told The Examiner.

Coyotes typically give birth to their pups in the spring and become much more active in the summer as they raise their young and look for food to bring back to their dens.

Kessler said that when coyotes are denning, the area that they become territorial over can extend 1,000 or more feet from the actual site. It becomes more imperative for people to keep their distance from coyotes when the animals are raising their young, she said.

“Although there were signs that coyotes were seen in the area, there were no denning signs which is what was needed to alert folks to the much more intense protective behavior that coyotes exhibit around denning sites and during pupping season,” Kessler said.

Campbell noted that coyote hazing — tactics people use to scare the animals away such as clapping their hands or popping an umbrella — might not always work during pupping season.

“If there are pups involved and parents are with the pups, they don’t respond to things like hazing because they want to protect their kids,” she said. “The best thing to do is just go away. Leave the area.”