Michael Perez doesn't have to see them to know they are there. "Whenever I see posters of missing pets, I say to myself, 'This place has a coyote problem,'" he said. "It's a clear indication." Perez, a state-licensed trapper with HHS Land Management in Land O'Lakes, said his business is fielding coyote calls with increasing frequency from residents in Pasco, Pinellas, and Hillsborough counties. "It's been going on for quite a while," he said. Fellow trapper David Lueck in St. Petersburg also reports a surge in calls from tri-county residents concerned about coyotes. "Every year, we are …

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will create a panel to study how urban and suburban residents can better coexist with the state's growing coyote presence. During the two-year study, the panel, announced last week, will collect data on coyote sightings, establish uniform educational efforts, train trappers in how to handle nuisance coyotes and develop a plan for dealing with aggressive coyotes. But don't call the panel a "task force," said FWC Southwest Region spokesman Gary Morse in Lakeland last Wednesday. The study group is not responding to a crisis, nor does it have …

A pilot called the Clearwater Airpark terminal in February with an unusual problem: He couldn't land because coyotes were encamped on the runway. "He had to fly around until (workers) could go out there and run them off," said Gordon Wills, Marine and Aviation Department operations manager for Clearwater. That proved to be easier said than done, recalled Clearwater Airpark general manager Barbara Cooper. "I thought they would be skittish, but they just don't move," she said. "We had to take a pickup truck out there to run them off." Cooper, who has worked at the airport since 2004, starting …

Coyote sightings have increased dramatically in Pasco, Pinellas, and Hillsborough counties in the last decade, but there is confusion about what animal, exactly, people are seeing. There are four possibilities: * The iconic balsa-boned songdog of the American West, usually tawny-brown solitary scavengers that rarely weigh more than 30 pounds. * "Coydogs," a one-generation hybrid, often sterile, of assorted colors and sizes that will "pack up" with other feral dogs. They are often the first indication that there are coyotes in an area, but rarely den with true coyotes.  * The Eastern coyote, a…

An Estero woman claimed to be bitten in Lee County by what appeared to be a coyote in June 2008. That is the lone coyote attack on a human recorded in the state according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Otherwise, there are only a few confirmed attacks on humans reported anywhere else in North America. But, state biologists and local animal control officers warn, once acclimated to living among people - often subsisting unseen in greenbelts, watershed lands, vacant lots or parks - coyotes can be brazen. Clearwater Air Park general manager Barbara Cooper said coyotes …