♪♪
-[ Howling ]
-We live in coyote country, and they're not going away.
-Coyote sightings in Seattle remind us
we coexist with wildlife.
Hear from the experts on how to make that relationship work.
-Make yourself look novel and big and yell, "Go away, Coyote."
[ Boat engine whirring ]
-A new program works to turn down the volume,
helping our endangered orcas.
-For them, noise is a full body experience.
Noise is a vibration of the whole medium that they exist in.
-At one time, it was a cornerstone species.
Then it went absent for decades. Are we now seeing a resurgence?
-We saw our second largest spawning event since the 1980s.
-These stories and more next on CityStream.
[ Both howling ]
♪♪
-I'm Erica Cerna in beautiful Lincoln Park,
and welcome to a special wildlife edition
of "CityStream".
Located just north of the Fauntleroy Ferry Terminal,
this 135-acre park has a lot to offer,
including miles of walking paths and bike trails,
plus athletic fields and play areas.
And each summer, Colman Pool is filled with heated saltwater.
It's the perfect spot
to enjoy stunning views of Puget Sound and the Olympic.
♪♪
Much of Lincoln Park is heavily forested
and is home to an abundance of wildlife.
One species spotted here
and elsewhere around the city
is the coyote.
These urban carnivores often go unnoticed,
but they have been living in Seattle for decades.
Producer Ian Devier spoke to biologists and experts
on what residents can do to stay safe and coexist
with our wild neighbors.
-I have a high respect for coyotes.
Yeah, they are so adaptive.
-I just think coyotes are fascinating in general.
-I just find them to be amazing animals.
They're super intelligent, able to live in different places.
-This is an animal that has had to outsmart larger predators
as their population expanded,
and then they've slowly started to go
from this more wild rural animal
to do exactly what they do in all other metropolitan areas.
-In the early 1900s, coyotes essentially
lived between the Rockies and the Mississippi.
Now they're found, you know,
from northern British Columbia and into Alaska,
all the way down to Mexico, coast to coast.
-Coyotes have probably been here for half a century
or quite a bit more.
-First coyote was documented in King County in 1937
in Enumclaw.
-We hear a lot of, "You know, it's urban sprawl,"
and I think that's true for many, many wildlife species,
but not for coyotes, because they're coming to us.
They're coming to where the food is.
-They're prey generalists,
so they can eat lots of different things.
There's some research going on right now
looking at that actual question.
-The Seattle Coyote Study is looking at the diet
and genetics of urban coyotes
throughout the greater Seattle area.
So we use all noninvasive methods.
So mainly just looking for scat out on trails and whatnot.
And then we use a process called dietary metabarcoding,
which basically looks at the genetics of prey items
within each of these scats and IDs it to species.
That allows us to kind of understand what vertebrates
and what plants that these coyotes are generally eating
across a long period of time.
-Having the scientific evidence,
this is how many hundreds
or thousands of coyote samples we've taken,
and from these areas of the county or western Washington --
I mean, that tells us a lot.
-Mainly, they're eating rabbits.
They've got some chicken in their diet.
They do have a little bit of cat.
Everyone always thinks they're only eating cats.
Not true.
-It's more likely that cats are hit by cars,
as far as the statistics out there.
But if someone calls us and says,
you know, "I've let my cat outside.
Is it possible that coyotes could take it?",
I can't say no.
-I can tell you from looking at scats,
there's a lot of blackberry in there,
but I've also seen them eating thimbleberries and blueberries.
They'll eat a lot of cherries as well,
small mammals like voles and rats that cause, you know,
infrastructure destruction
or spread diseases and things like that.
-To the extent that coyotes
are focusing on those types of prey items,
it can be really beneficial to human communities.
-[ Howling ]
-Coyotes have a very intricate communication system.
-Those yips and barks are not "I'm coming for you."
-[ Howls ]
-They vocalize just to keep social contact
within the family group.
-Oftentimes, that's just them saying, "Hey, who's out there?"
You know, "I'm over here."
So it's a non-confrontational call,
depending on the time of the year.
We get those calls all the time, right? There's 30 coyotes here.
[ Both howling ]
-It's called the Beau Geste effect,
something to do with harmonics in their vocalizations,
and it makes it sound like there are more animals
than there actually are.
-[ Both howling ]
-So there've been studies that have shown that humans
overestimate the number of animals by about a third.
-[ Howling ]
-Sometimes when they see dogs or people kind of near
something they care about, like their dens,
they'll emit, like, a warning bark.
-[ Barks ]
-And there's nothing to be scared of there.
They're just communicating that you're kind of in their space
and they they might not want you there.
-It's not uncommon for coyotes to follow people
along green spaces or down trails.
-In Seattle, the peak kind of denning time
is between May and June.
And so, that's often when we see that escorting behavior,
and all they're doing is pretty much
making sure that you're away from their babies
because that's what they care about.
That's what they're protecting.
-There's a tremendous amount of fear
that doesn't necessarily need to be there.
I've been doing this for 23 years,
and out of thousands of calls that we take,
I'm guessing less than ten times
has there been actual contact
between a coyote and a human.
So, it's very rare.
-We don't even have a coyote bite a year,
and it's more likely the animal is going to follow you,
it's going to be inquisitive,
and that's when we need to have both adults and children
educated to have a reaction that's appropriate.
-We call it humane hazing.
It's really trying to just encourage coyotes
to not become too used to being really close to people.
-I'm going to throw this stick, you know,
or if I've got a coat on because there's rain --
we're raining right now, and make yourself look novel
and big and yell, "Go away, coyote!"
-Any activity at all,
any behavior you can do that makes them feel unwelcome,
the more you can exclude, the better.
-If the whole community is doing that,
that animal never has the opportunity to think,
"I've got it made in your backyard."
The encounters we don't want to see
is when the coyote doesn't budge,
doesn't seem like it's scared at all.
-It may not seem like that big of a deal
right then and there,
but that's not natural for a wild raccoon, coyote,
whatever to be walking around amongst students
on a college campus.
-People sometimes think that, like, feeding coyotes
is helping that coyote,
but there's kind of a saying in wildlife biology
that a fed coyote is a dead coyote,
and that's because it will habituate coyote
to think that people equal food.
-That's just going to lead one way -- loss of fear,
and then the ultimate removal of the animal.
-Lethal removals --
you just changed that territory dynamic.
So that's an open house.
-We know that another coyote is going to fill that void.
The goal now is to educate the community,
to keep that new coyote wild.
It is virtually impossible to re-instill fear
into adult coyotes.
Now with young coyotes,
you can really ingrain fear into those coyotes,
and that's really what we should be doing.
-In most cases, it's a peaceful coexistence.
Coyotes live quite well
without having any interactions with people.
Mostly what it comes down to is making sure our food is secured,
any outdoor food,
not leaving pet food on the porch.
-Clean up your garbage, your compost, your garden.
Again, exclude as well. Hot wire, fencing.
-You also have a pear tree and a plum tree.
I know it's daunting, but you might want
to try to keep that stuff picked up
because that's why they're coming there.
-And there's nothing that coyote will
or can do to avoid that.
It's on us to make them avoid it
by making those spaces unfavorable to them.
We live in coyote country, and they're not going away.
So the thing of it is,
is learning how to live with them.
-[ Howling ]
-If you come across an animal that may be a potential problem,
call the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife Enforcement.
Call their office at (360) 902-2936.
And if you spot a coyote, that poses an immediate danger,
call 911.
Just ahead, a new program aims to help endangered orcas
by making their world a bit less chaotic.
That story as "CityStream" continues.
♪♪
-"CityStream" returns from West Seattle's Lincoln Park.
Now just offshore,
it's not unusual to spot a truly Northwest spectacle --
Southern Resident killer whales in search of salmon.
Now a new program is testing how to help the endangered orcas.
It's called Quiet Sound,
and it looks to do just that --
reduce noise in waters these animals call home.
Michael Crowe reports.
[ Construction noises ]
-Beneath the waves of Puget Sound,
the noise of the world above fades.
[ Seagulls squawking ]
Here, the endangered Southern Resident orcas
rely on that quiet,
speaking to each other in a complex language
and using echolocation to hunt for salmon.
But the human cacophony...
[ Boat engine whirring ]
...follows them even here.
This is the sound of a passing ship
recorded on an underwater microphone called a hydrophone.
-Sound actually travels four times faster and further
in water than it does above water,
and we know that vessels emit sound in the frequencies
that killer whales need in order to communicate and hunt.
-Rachel Aronson is the program director
for Quiet Sound of Washington Maritime Blue,
which hopes to give these struggling whales
back their peace.
They ran a trial shipping slowdown last year
from October to January,
measuring sound reduction for the good of the whales.
Between Port Townsend and Edmonds,
they asked passing large vessels
to voluntarily reduce their speed to 14.5 knots
or 11 knots, depending on the type.
Hydrophones were used to measure sound levels.
-That's about a reduction of 30% to 50%
from usual cruising speeds
for these types of vessels.
-It was voluntary, so of 623 transits,
70% participated in some way,
and 53% fully met the speed targets.
Whales were present in that zone
43% of slowdown days, according to their report.
That led to a soundscape that was 45% less noisy,
which they consider a fantastic result.
[ Construction noises ]
But importantly, they found there wasn't a huge burden
on the shipping system,
which bodes well for future work,
though it did add about an hour per trip.
-So far, we're hearing that it had a pretty minimal impact
on commercial shipping.
We didn't hear of any impacts happening at the port.
We didn't hear of any impacts
happening in the systems that receive the ship.
From our conversations so far, it seems like it worked okay.
-It was a great opportunity to just, you know,
add value environmentally to Puget Sound.
-Matt Hannuksela is a Puget Sound Pilot,
the group that boards ships
to help them navigate the inland waters.
The Pilots were the face of this effort,
pitching the vessel captains on participating,
and Hannuksela said as a trusted messenger,
it was generally well received.
-I think it's fantastic. It's really rewarding
in that you're moving a big piece of steel around
to help out, you know, commerce
and the citizens of Washington State,
but at the same time, you're able to really do something
that has some environmental impact for a positive.
-He felt like a voice for the whales
and hopes it will make a difference.
-To make a successful impact,
all parties have to maybe compromise a little bit
because nobody is going to ultimately win.
So I think everybody came to the table
willing to give up what they could
to have a successful result.
-Noise is not the only threat
that the Southern Residents face,
as state reports have identified it
as one of three primary issues,
with pollution and prey availability.
But it is one that might be simpler to address.
-The thing I love about noise pollution
is that when you stop the noise,
the noise pollution is gone instantly.
It's not like toxics pollution,
where toxics can stay in the water on and on.
-And worth the effort,
when you consider the human-caused conditions
these incredible animals face,
the acoustic blinders of these busy waters.
-For them, noise is a full body experience.
Noise is a vibration of the whole medium that they exist in.
It really limits their world,
their scope of vision, as it were.
For us, it'd be like being surrounded
by a thick fog all the time.
-And with just 73 left, every little bit helps.
-They're a really small population.
That means they get more vulnerable.
We need to do everything we can
to keep this unique group of whales alive and around.
[ Orcas chirping ]
-This program is based on an existing and successful one
already running near Vancouver, BC.
Quiet Sound hopes this data will help them improve the program
and potentially make the slowdown an annual event.
Next on "CityStream",
long ago, it signaled spring was on the way.
Then this run nearly vanished.
But are we now seeing a resurgence?
♪♪
Just north of here, near Alki Point
and elsewhere in Puget Sound,
a natural phenomenon once played out during springtime.
It was a seasonal occurrence as common as budding blooms
and added hours of sunlight.
For Native Americans in early Northwest settlers,
this event provided both a rich food source
and a piece of the local culture in this region,
and it appears to be coming back.
Producer David Albright explains.
-On a crisp spring day in Suquamish,
across the water from Seattle on the Kitsap Peninsula,
an unusual amount of marine predator activity
gives hints of something happening
under the water's surface.
The scene is immediately recognizable
to those with ancestral knowledge of the region.
It's herring spawning season in Puget Sound.
-Yeah, herring is as important as salmon,
in a lot of ways.
It's always been one of the cornerstone species.
-Herring are a key piece of the ecological puzzle
in Puget Sound
and were an important food source for indigenous tribes.
But as the human population grew around them,
their numbers plummeted.
-We had been on a pretty long downward trend.
We had some pretty large fisheries
that have since been closed,
partially in response to overfishing at the time,
some of our more iconic stocks have declined by over 99%.
Some stocks have disappeared entirely.
But just recently, in 2020,
we saw our second largest spawning event since the 1980s.
It's a two-sided vegetation grapnel
that we just drag to pick up samples of vegetation
to check for eggs.
There we go.
-So we've got a bunch of -- sargassum is the algae,
and a very heavy spawning event came through here.
It's a good sign.
-With commercial herring fishing mostly halted
in Puget Sound,
numbers seem to be rebounding.
In fact, Phil and his team are tracking a new stock,
or a group of fish that spawns together in a specific area,
that are spawning on beaches right near downtown Seattle.
Scuba diver and filmmaker Laura James was one of the first
to notice a spawning event off Alki Point in 2017.
-So we were out here diving one day
and we were coming back up from a dive,
and I noticed there were herring eggs.
My dive buddy and I went on
a little adventure around the point,
and we just started walking and documenting
where we saw herring eggs,
and it turned out there were literally herring eggs
from basically down by Cove 2,
maybe a couple miles away from here,
all the way down to Lincoln Park.
-Scientists have taken to calling this new stock
the Elliott Bay stock.
-It's sort of one of the more interesting stocks
because it's both our newest stock, which is exciting,
but also it hasn't really settled
on a preferred spawning area.
So we've seen it at the sculpture park.
We've seen it at Alki Beach.
-So far in 2023, the Elliott Bay stock
hasn't turned up in its usual spawning grounds,
or if it did, it went undetected.
This points to the need for more citizen observers
to keep an eye out for herring spawning events.
Laura uses the West Seattle blog community
to help notify her of activity off Alki.
-I'll literally say,
"Hey everybody, could you watch the shoreline and e-mail me?
Like, literally e-mail me personally
if you see crazy activity along the shoreline."
-Another visible sign of herring,
which Laura was able to capture in these aerial shots,
is white water.
-And it's, you know, essentially so much eggs and milk
in the water that will actually turn the water milky.
And so, that combination of white water
and a lot of predator activity is what you can expect to see.
-So, indications are that things are looking up
for our Puget Sound herring.
Back here in Suquamish.
the tribe is celebrating the return of spawning events,
like this one, that haven't been seen in a generation.
-I mean, our fishermen today haven't --
especially the younger ones,
have never been in a herring fishery
because there hasn't been a harvest for numbers.
It's been a while since we've seen large returns
that you can actually notice.
-We're cautiously optimistic
that we're sort of turning the corner and conditions
have allowed us to have a couple of good year classes
and hopefully, to start to see an increasing trend
in our herring biomass.
-Cautious optimism sums it up well.
A growing population of herring and other forage fish
would be a welcome sign for some of
the better known species in the region,
since they are a key piece of the ecosystem
that supports larger animals like salmon and orcas.
-Herring in particular are critical as food for salmon,
but they also act as a prey buffer for salmon.
So we've learned that forage fish actually will help
reduce the predation on juvenile salmon
from things like harbor seals and sea lions.
-The Elliott Bay stock in particular can be seen as a sign
that efforts to improve our natural habitat in the city
are having their intended effect.
-Where we first found it, near the sculpture park,
there was an effort there to ensure
that there was some structure for habitat.
So I think it is a sign that if we're thoughtful about
how we're doing our development and try to maintain
some of those key habitat features in the water,
these fish will take advantage of it.
-This is a brilliant natural event
occurring so close to a major metropolis.
I mean, how many places can you have forage fish eggs
being laid literally with a city skyline in the background?
It's amazing.
-Amazing, indeed.
Another small reminder that Seattle is at the doorstep
of the Salish Sea's diverse marine ecosystem.
-Phil and his team did their final survey
of the season in mid-June,
but did not find evidence of herring spawning in Elliott Bay.
Still, the numbers continue to trend upward,
and they say if you spot signs of herring spawning
along Puget Sound shores next spring,
you could be witnessing the resurgence
of a piece of the sound and its natural history.
♪♪
We end with another example of humans
learning to co-exist with wildlife.
Beavers call many Seattle wetlands home,
including an area about a mile northeast of here.
As Michael Crowe reports,
these industrious little critters bring with them
a long list of environmental benefits.
-Hidden deep in the green of Magnuson Park,
the work of engineers, tiny, furry ones.
-So, this is the main beaver pond,
and this is where the beavers live.
-Nature's construction crew, hard at work
in Seattle City Parks, and tonight --
-Well, we'll see. We might be able to see a little better.
-...Elyssa Kerr of the nonprofit Beavers Northwest
is on the lookout for them.
-Their lodge is kind of just around the corner
and across the pond
through all of these sticks,
if we had X-ray vision right across that way.
-Magnuson Park has long been home to urban beavers,
landscape architects shaping this pond to their liking.
The signs are everywhere.
-So this is the perfect example of a beaver-chewed tree.
They've chewed all the bark off of the base of this tree
and have started to chew into it.
You can really tell it's beavers
because of these awesome teeth marks that are in here.
-They do that for a number of reasons --
to eat the sugary cambium layer under the bark
and to gather building material for dams and lodges.
But it's not just their construction
that shapes the landscape.
Their destruction encourages more growth, too,
like on the stump of these willows.
-And if I feel it, I can feel all those beaver teeth marks.
It's kind of got this sharp, pointy feel
that beaver-chewed sticks have.
And after it was chewed, it sent up new sprouts.
And you'll see that happening over and over and over again.
Beavers can continue to harvest
and eat from them and build from them,
and yet, we still have this amazing growth.
-There are other benefits as well.
Beavers slow the flow of water to form wetlands,
creating habitat for animals ranging from deer
to weasels to insects and birds.
Those wetlands can also improve water quality
by slowing it down on the landscape.
In 2020 and 2021,
Beavers Northwest conducted a survey
with a King County Waterworks grant
in partnership with Seattle Parks and Recreation
and found 13 active beaver colonies on Seattle Parks land.
But like any roommate, coexisting takes...
-Uh... -...work.
-They also start to flood our trails.
-Beavers' industrious efforts can lead to expanding ponds
and trails that don't drain properly if left alone,
which is what brings Beavers Northwest here.
They maintain a complicated relationship
with their namesake animal,
partially foiling their efforts
with limiting devices to let water through dams.
They've been managing them here since 2013.
-Everything I do is trying to help people
and beavers compromise.
We want to keep beavers where they're at
and let them keep doing what they're doing,
but also make sure that, you know,
people infrastructure is still accessible and usable.
-But those installations are tough to see here
through the summer vegetation,
just like the beavers themselves.
-Yeah. So that could be one full side.
-So, a few miles away in Kirkland...
-So, we're just cutting apart the fence panels right now.
-...we can get a better look at work underway
on one of those limiting devices.
Forbes Lake is surrounded by homes close to the water,
and beavers living here have been a bit too successful
in their dam building, raising the water level.
-This is a notch exclusion fence,
which is a method of keeping beavers
away from a notch in the dam,
so allowing water to flow through the dam
at a level that we determine and prevent flooding.
-For years, the homeowner has been doing battle,
tearing down what the beavers build up.
The goal here is to reduce that maintenance
so that the beavers can be good neighbors, too.
-The alternative to this type of device is that beavers
would be completely removed from the system.
So, they would, you know, not be able to be here,
do their work, have babies,
continue to spread out on the landscape.
So, by installing a device like this,
we're helping these landowners live with these beavers
and kind of compromise with them.
We want these benefits that beavers provide
by building dams, creating wetlands,
but we don't want, you know, the flooding of infrastructure,
and particularly in this case,
you know, septic systems, like we don't want that being flooded
and then causing water quality problems.
-This mirrors how water at Magnuson Park is managed
with a similar device called a pond leveler,
which is basically a hidden drain
that the beavers can't close off.
Beavers Northwest helps the city
manage several sites with urban beavers,
like Longfellow Creek and Meadowbrook Pond.
-I was just wondering if I heard somebody chewing, but...
-Back at Magnuson Park...
-...I think I'm just wishful thinking.
-...the twilight hunt for these critters continues.
-Yeah, so I'm really looking for, like, a floating head.
Beavers really just cruise across the water.
-This is their active time
when you're most likely to spot them.
Right as the sun sets, they get to work.
-Look so silly with that big stick.
-And sure enough, here they are, with mouths full,
changing the landscape one branch at a time.
-They belong here,
and really, when we restore these areas,
I think one of the great stories at Magnuson Park is that,
you know, this park used to be a naval air base,
and then these wetlands were restored in 2010.
So, fairly recently. This is a pretty recent wetland system
we have here.
They dug all these ponds,
they planted tens of thousands of willows,
and beavers moved in pretty immediately and said,
"Wow, thank you so much. This is wonderful."
-And now they're here with the ecological benefits they bring,
from water quality to climate resilience.
-Oh. Little dive. -And the added benefit
of knowing these incredible creatures
call Seattle home, just like us.
-It's really special.
I think it's just -- They're such funny little animals
and big animals -- [ Chuckles ] --
and it's just neat to see them doing what they do
and being so successful at it.
I didn't have to work very hard to get here, you know?
I pretty much drove here and parked my car,
walked 20 feet, and here we are, and we've got beavers.
And that's amazing.
-Beavers Northwest also offers free evening nature walks
to explore how beavers help
both the environment and salmon recovery efforts.
To learn more, go to beaversnw.org/events.
We'll be right back.
♪♪
That wraps up this special wildlife edition of "CityStream"
from Lincoln Park.
If you'd like to see more outstanding
Seattle channel programs, go to our website,
seattlechannel.org,
and search "feature shows".
I'm Enrique Cerna. Thanks for joining us.
♪♪