Watch CBS News

'Coyote Busters' Coming To Help Belmont

BELMONT (CBS) – If you see a coyote in Belmont, who ya gonna call?

Not Ghostbusters, but pretty soon you might be able to call "Coyote Busters."

The town's board of health has approved a coyote management plan that involves showing residents how to scare them off.

"The first part of the hazing plan consists of a person standing his or her ground, never ignoring a coyote, and yelling and making frightening noises until the animal leaves," Dr. David Alper, the chairman of the Belmont Board of Health, told WBZ NewsRadio 1030.

Alper said the town's animal control officer came to the board with a plan to deal with the coyotes, which are known for attacking pets.

"They would create kind of a 'coyote busters' squad or a coyote terrorizing squad, if you will, where we would have citizens that would be trained by him and by the department that could be called at a moment's notice to come when a particular citizen finds a coyote on their property and they don't know how to deal with it."

Alper says coyotes are now "part of life in Belmont," just like turkeys, foxes and other wild animals.

He believes they're not going to leave, so the town needs to find a way to deal with them.

"If this group of coyotes left our territory, another group would simply come in. What we need to do more than anything else is maintain the coyote's instinctive fear of humans."

"Coyotes instinctively have a fear for humans," according to Alper, "and if we take the aggressive approach, they will easily back off. So, by making noise, by throwing things at them, if water is available, we spray water in their direction."

The idea is not to give coyotes control in a confrontation.

"When coyotes continue to see humans acting in fear of them is when they lose the fear and then they can take the high ground and start to infiltrate our lives even more."

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.