Coyotes in the Classroom

Do rural coyotes travel farther distances than urban coyotes? Do male or female coyotes cover more area? Where do coyotes spend most of their time? Does that change with the seasons? With the Coyote Track website students can explore data from GPS-collared coyotes in Illinois to find answers to these questions and many more.

Coyote Track Website

I recently sat down with Lorna Shuman, Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) Director of the Education Division, to learn about this exciting tool for educators and students. She explained that the Coyote Track website is a standards-based, educational program developed by the IDNR Division of Wildlife Resources and IDNR Division of Education. The website was built and is maintained by DJ Case & Associates.

The program is centered around coyote ecology and behavior and encourages students to investigate data collected from coyotes in urban and rural areas throughout Illinois. Geared for middle and high school students, the website can also be used by students in third, fourth or fifth grade, with a little assistance from their teachers. Teachers will enjoy the site because it uses Next Generation Science Standards. Students will like it because it’s just plain fun to use.

Coyote Home Ranges

When students go to the website they can view the home ranges of 21 different Illinois coyotes. Each coyote was fitted with a GPS neck collar which provided the biologists with their locations every four hours, everyday…in some cases, totaling thousands of data points. Those data allowed the biologists to map the home ranges of each coyote. Some of the data was collected in 2015-2016, some in 2019-2020, and some in 2023 and 2024. Both rural and urban coyotes were tracked. Students can select locations in the northern, central or southern part of the state to explore the behavior of coyotes that live near them. Or they can choose to analyze data statewide.

Each coyote has a profile which includes their gender, where and when they were fitted with the collar and, in some cases, a photo of the coyote. In cases where there isn’t a photo of the coyote, an illustrated image is used.

The Visualization Tool allows students to see the coyote’s home range, which is the area the coyote uses for denning, hunting for food and finding a mate, as well as heat maps, which show areas that the coyote used most often. The Animal Timeline feature lets students watch the coyotes “move” across the landscape, while the Show Timeline feature shows all of the coyote’s movements in one snapshot—a handy feature when a coyote has more than 1,000 locations on the map!

Lotek GPS Satellite Tracking Collars

Biologists traditionally used radio or acoustic systems to track animals, in a process where the signals travel from a transmitter placed on the animal to a nearby receiver in a vehicle or carried by a person. That can be an expensive and time-consuming process. By contrast, the coyotes in this project were fitted with Lotek GPS collars that communicate with satellites orbiting the earth. The collars take positional snapshots of the coyotes several times a day and those data can be either transmitted to the biologists via communication satellite systems or retrieved when the collar is recovered. This process is safe for the coyotes and a time-efficient way for biologists to gather a lot of location data about where (and when) coyotes are spending their time.

Next Generation Learning Standards

The Inquiries and Projects page of the website provides a sample of concepts that students can use in conjunction with the Visualization Tool. Focused on Behavior, Population Dynamics, Human-Wildlife Interaction, Habitat, and Technology, each area of interest provides questions that the students can use to explore the data in more detail. Questions provided in the program include: Do coyotes impact other wildlife?, Why do people hunt or trap coyotes in Illinois?, and What other technologies exist for tracking animals? Students can also download data into a spreadsheet and use the data to form hypotheses and answer their own questions.

Many of the projects are suited for developing written reports, persuasive speeches or team research, and the site was built to meet the Next Generation Learning Standards. Teachers will find the Standards page useful, as it provides information about how each project addresses the standards.

Ready to dive in? This video provides an overview of how to use the site.

ENTICE Coyote Track Trainings

For educators who are interested in learning more about the Coyote Track project, Shuman also conducts Environment and Nature Training Institute for Conservation Education (ENTICE) trainings on Coyote Track and other natural resources topics. ENTICE provides natural resources training for educators through hands-on, interdisciplinary workshops led by natural resources professionals and other educators and provides Professional Development hours for teachers. The next ENTICE Coyote Track training will be held at the Chicago Botanic Garden on February 15, 2025. You can register here. And other training courses will be held throughout the year.

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Laura Kammin is a Natural Resources Specialist with the National Great Rivers Research and Education Center. She formerly held positions at Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, University of Illinois Extension, Prairie Rivers Network and the Illinois Natural History Survey. She received her master’s degree in wildlife ecology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.