“Coexistence isn’t working”: Coyotes killed her dog. Now she wants them gone

When Ruby Kooner lost her beloved pup Amber after a coyote attack last December, she wanted to channel her heartbreak into action. The Coyote Safety Alliance is a citizen group co-founded by Kooner and other Liberty Village and Fort York residents. They say redevelopment in the area has upset the natural balance, putting humans, pets and even the coyotes themselves in harm’s way. Last week, the city took action by euthanizing two coyotes. Animal activists are outraged, but Kooner sees it as a Band-Aid solution to a much bigger problem.

You organized a vigil over the weekend to honour your dog, Amber, and other Toronto pets who have been killed recently by coyotes. Can you talk about the event? The vigil was in honour of the pets that have been killed—five dogs and two cats—as well as the pet owners, nature and wildlife that have been impacted. That includes the coyotes that have been displaced from their habitats and pushed into residential neighbourhoods. That’s something I want to be really clear on. We are not against the coyotes that have coexisted with humans for years in this part of the city. We believe that the balance was upset by development in the area and specifically the redevelopment of Ontario Place. Last October, a construction crew went in and destroyed over 800 trees. My dog, Amber, was attacked in November, and there have been many violent incidents since then.

Related: Why this former Liberal MP is defending Doug Ford’s Ontario Place megaspa

What can you tell me about Amber getting attacked? It was a Saturday night, after dark. We went out for a walk in Ordnance Triangle Park, which is about two minutes from my building. There were no coyotes in sight, we didn’t go near any bushes and we were close to a lamp. Amber was on a leash. She was going to the washroom, and I was reaching into my pocket to get a poop bag when we were totally ambushed by two coyotes. I think I went into shock. I’d seen the instructions on what to do if you’re approached by a coyote—make yourself big, make noise—but it all happened so quickly. It was only when I heard my dog scream as she was being bit that I snapped out of it. It was like my motherly instincts kicked in. I just went batshit crazy—kicking and screaming. I swooped down and grabbed Amber, but the coyotes continued to come at us even as she was in my arms bleeding. Then three women approached us, and they were able to help us get to safety. I took Amber to the emergency room at the animal hospital on Yonge Street. She had multiple wounds, but they were able to stitch her up. She couldn’t walk, and she had one of those cones around her head, but I thought she was going to survive. Then she contracted sepsis from her wounds. She spent a week in the ICU before she died in December.

That sounds horrible. I’m sure you miss her a lot. So much. I am thinking about adopting another dog, but it’s still hard. Her death made me want to do something. The problem was only getting worse. My building is right by the park, so I was able to hear dogs screaming any time there was a coyote attack, and I could watch them from my window. In January, we had six attacks in one day—four before 11 a.m. I was working from home, and I was out on my balcony screaming at people to watch out. We started the Coyote Safety Coalition with the goal of resolving the problem humanely and keeping residents in the area safe. There are about six of us who run the group, and about 600 members on Facebook, mostly in the Liberty Village and Fort York area. People report sightings, and we’re able to track individual packs and animals to keep residents alert. Between March of 2024 and today there have been 130 encounters with aggressive coyotes in the area.

Aggressive meaning what? Meaning some kind of alarming encounter: being lunged at, chased, attacked and even bitten. If somebody sees a coyote but nothing happens, that doesn’t count in terms of our numbers. It’s mostly pets, but there have been injuries to humans and at least one report where a coyote attempted to grab a two-year-old child who was walking with his mother on King Street. Over the winter, we had two reports of coyotes stalking kids who were playing on snow hills.

I’ve read that these coyotes are no longer scared of humans. Why is that? What we’re talking about here are habituated coyotes, which is what happens when coyotes live in close proximity with humans and are sometimes even fed by them. The result is a loss of fear, and that’s how you get the lunging and stalking. They’ve started venturing into urban areas like the parking lots at Metro, Wendy’s or the RBC. Non-habituated coyotes would only attack if they felt threatened, but that is no longer the case.

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Are they attacking dogs for food? We consulted with a wildlife expert, Dennis Murray, who is the Canada Research Chair in Integrative Wildlife Conservation at Trent University. He said the attacks on smaller dogs are likely for food. With the larger dog attacks—a German shepherd, for example—it’s probably more an issue of being territorial.

Coyote advocates will often say that the problem here is not coyotes but dogs being off leashes. What do you think? This is something the coyote activists like to say. If they can put the blame on dog owners, then they can push for coexistence—which isn’t working—rather than actually recognizing that there is a problem and we have to deal with it. In terms of leashes, I can say that of the 130 attacks that have been reported to our organization, 80 per cent were against leashed animals.

I’m sure you’re aware that the city recently euthanized two coyotes in your neighbourhood. Is that good news? We were very saddened to hear about the city’s decision to cull rather than relocate. We have a small subset within our group that is pro culling, but the majority of us have been pushing the city to relocate the animals. When I spoke with the city’s acting director for municipal licensing and standards, she said the issue was that, in Ontario, we have a law that restricts relocating wildlife to one kilometre. We are the only province that has this rule. In Quebec, it’s 75 kilometres. To properly relocate the coyotes, the Ministry of Natural Resources would have had to approve an exception, and apparently they weren’t willing to do that. It’s especially frustrating because the same government was willing to exempt the spa portion of the Ontario Place redevelopment from an environmental assessment—one that we believe would have highlighted the dangers of displacing wildlife.

The Ministry of Natural Resources has denied that the Ontario Place redevelopment is what pushed coyotes into urban spaces, saying there were no dens on the site prior to construction. We have gotten that response, and it’s bullshit. Chris Glover, who is the MPP for Spadina–Fort York, has time-stamped photographic evidence of coyotes at Ontario Place before the construction, and we have seen the same kind of evidence from countless members of the local community. I can’t speak for the ministry, but in my opinion they are denying the truth to cover their butts.

The city’s press release indicates that one of the euthanized coyotes was responsible for a lot of the negative encounters. Do you know which one they’re talking about? Yes. That was the coyote with mange on its tail, a parasitic skin disease that can be irritating. It can cause coyotes to be more aggressive. We’d been asking the city for months to treat that coyote, which it could have done. We need a better strategy than “Let shit go crazy and then kill them.”

Are you anticipating an earful from animal rights activists? Oh, definitely. Even before this, we have gotten death threats, angry voicemails, prank calls. One repeat caller sounds like a deep Batman villain voice, saying, “Die, die, die” and something about coyotes. I got a voicemail before our rally in April where they said I was going to die there. One of the other coalition members has gotten a threat that he’s going to die because the coyotes are going to kill him.

The city’s decision to kill the coyotes may not have been what you wanted, but are you a little bit relieved? I feel a sense of relief that the community is able to walk their dogs without fear, for now. In terms of whether this solves the problem, though, we’ll have to wait and see. And it’s not just Liberty Village and Fort York. We have had sightings in Parkdale and Trinity-Bellwoods recently. And then you look at Downsview Park, where there are a ton of coyote dens—and where they’re currently building the new Rogers Stadium.

So if you’re going to the Oasis concert, you may want to bring your coyote horn? I think that, if the city doesn’t act, we’re going to have an issue.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.