'They've lost their fear:' Burlington approves new measures after unprovoked coyote attacks

The City of Burlington is undertaking a series of measures to stem the number of coyote attacks on humans after six people were involved in unprovoked coyote attacks in recent weeks.

On Wednesday, the city held an emergency council meeting which saw the unanimous approval of a series of measures.

"We're throwing everything we can at this to get right to the source of what's causing this, and obviously try to track down the coyotes responsible for the specific attacks,” said Burlington Mayor Marianne Meed Ward.

According to the city, these are the first reported coyote attacks on humans in Burlington.

The mayor said the city is looking at spending nearly $1 million on the new measures over two years, including hiring two additional animal control officers and two additional bylaw control officers.

The city has spoken to experts from the Ministry of Natural Resources who said the coyotes are being fed in the community both intentionally and unintentionally leading to the animals having lost their fear of humans.

“They believe it’s the work of one family of coyotes. All the attacks occurred within a couple of kilometres of each other,” said Meed Ward.

The city tracked and “eliminated” one coyote believed responsible for the first three attacks but continue to actively seek the others.

The city said in a media release the most recent attack was on Saturday, involving a woman sitting outside her retirement home on New Street in the Roseland neighbourhood relaxing when she “awoke to the pain of the coyote biting her in the hip area. The coyote was startled when she woke up but tried to approach her again.”

“We’ve had six attacks in total, starting in July was the first reported [attack], and as theses started to escalate we realized we needed to take stronger action to protect our community,” said Meed Ward.

Meed Ward said the city has to get to the root cause behind these coyote attacks.

Another recent attack involved a two-and-a-half-year-old boy who was bit in his backyard.

"His father went in to get him a drink of water, heard screams, came out, saw blood, and noticed bite marks on his neck and looked up, and there was a coyote in their backyard. He had jumped a fence, there was no food back there, no dog, nothing. He was going straight for the toddler, one presumes, to carry him off,” said Meed Ward.