Abstract:
In 2009, Greenwood Village and Centennial, Colorado (two bordering suburban towns
south of Denver), passed coyote management plans in response to community concerns
over human-coyote interactions. Although both plans are similar in many respects, they
differ in some key ways, including over definitions of what constitutes aggressive coyote
behavior and under what circumstances lethal control can be used. Greenwood Village’s
use of lethal control created controversy in the Denver metropolitan area and caused
animal and wildlife advocates to get involved, while some wildlife groups have held up
Centennial’s management plan as a model. Using a mixed methodology, grounded-theory
approach, this study looks at the root causes of the differing approaches of the two towns
through social, political, and geographical lenses. It also explores the ways the social
conflict has been sustained by means of differing constructions of people, coyotes, and
coyote-human interactions by the stakeholders involved in the conflict, as well as
examining the variables that help predict whether a person is likely to support lethal
control or not.
