As more Liberty Village and Fort York residents join the outcry about an increase of coyote attacks in the area, many have claimed construction at Ontario Place forced the canines out of their habitat and into the downtown area. Developers and provincial officials, however, have argued that isn’t the case.
Debates between locals and city officials have been fiery. Several residents have said they now live in fear of aggressive coyote attacks and fret for the safety of their children and pets.
Ruby Kooner, leader of the Coyote Safety Coalition, has documented more than 40 reported altercations involving coyotes in the area between November 2024 and February 2025.
Kooner and other locals have said the coyote sightings increased just weeks after hundreds of mature trees and several acres of wildlife habitat were cut down from Ontario Place’s West Island last November.
Lately, fear among residents is increasing. On Feb. 10, the Coyote Safety Coalition received reports from residents that six coyote attacks occurred in the Liberty Village and Fort York area in the span of just four hours.
Kooner has had enough. Her small dog Amber died after it was attacked by a coyote last December while out for a walk in Ordnance Triangle Park.
She, like many other locals, has pointed a finger at the construction on West Island as reason for the coyote presence. Together, the residents are blaming Doug Ford’s government for having allowed the Ontario Place demolition to happen.
“We’ve coexisted for years, and in the past, coyotes would walk right by us and never attack us,” she told TorontoToday.
Kooner said the alleged loss of coyote habitat at Ontario Place has made the canines “quite aggressive.”
“They’ve since moved into our area and now they’re in survival mode,” she claimed.
Those allegations have been echoed by politicians at multiple levels of government, including from Deputy Mayor Ausma Malik.
In January, Malik said the coyotes “have been displaced from their habitats without proper consideration by the provincial redevelopment like Ontario Place and are dangerously entering our growing neighbourhoods.”
The Ministry of Natural Resources, however, denies that any coyotes have been displaced.
After completing two environment assessments of the West Island in 2022 and 2023, the ministry said it did not identify any evidence of coyote habitats at the site.
“Environmental due diligence, Indigenous consultation and public consultation have been key components of the Ontario Place redevelopment project,” a ministry spokesperson wrote in an email to TorontoToday.
Still, Kooner and other advocates are calling on city officials and wildlife experts to implement a sustainable action plan and enhanced patrol coverage to combat the rise in reported coyote attacks.
Is Doug Ford to blame for coyote attacks?
Ontario Place’s West Island has undergone substantial alterations since the construction project began and fencing was first erected around the area in early 2024.
The site, which is being redeveloped by the Austrian spa company Therme, came under heavy scrutiny last October when the provincial government gave the go-ahead to cut down hundreds of trees in short order.
According to Norm Di Pasquale, co-chair of the advocacy group Ontario Place for All, roughly 850 trees were taken down in a 12-hour span to help make way for the highly contentious private spa and waterpark.
Di Pasquale said he travelled to West Island only hours after the trees were chopped to get a glimpse for himself.
“I saw animals scampering in every direction — foxes running away, panicked birds,” he alleged. “[The province] didn’t even take the time to find and relocate animals. This was done under cover at night so people wouldn’t see the trees being taken down.”
Though Di Pasquale did not see any coyotes fleeing the area, he said he believes the animals relied on sources of food and shelter in the area where the trees were cut.
According to Di Pasquale and others in his camp, that loss of food and shelter is what has forced hungry, aggravated coyotes into Liberty Village.
But the ministry, alongside Therme, isn’t buying it.
According to Infrastructure Ontario’s Natural Heritage Impact Study, seven mammals (excluding bats) were directly observed on the island over the course of its field surveys. This includes American minks, beavers, eastern cottontails, eastern grey squirrels, raccoons, red squirrels and striped skunks.
Therme spokesperson John Perenack told TorontoToday the biologists at the site did not find any coyotes.
“The idea there’s any kind of displacement [of coyotes] from Ontario Place just doesn’t align with what we know the facts are,” he said.
The Ministry of Natural Resources said its own assessments and studies did not identify a coyote presence in the West Island area. Two environmental assessments — one of which was informed by consultation with Indigenous communities, public and stakeholders — were completed through the ministry for the Ontario Place site.
Last year, Infrastructure Ontario chief executive Michael Lindsay told reporters the trees that were removed from West Island will eventually be replaced.
Frustrations have boiled over
Ann Selvana is one of the six residents who said they were allegedly attacked by a coyote on Monday evening in Liberty Village and Fort York.
She took her 5-year-old dog Gregorio, a small terrier mix, for a quick walk in June Callwood Park when a coyote caught her by surprise.
“I looked away for honestly three seconds and this coyote was suddenly mid-air and lunging at my dog,” she said. “I’m trying to kick the coyote off my dog, and there were four other dog owners near me, and we were all screaming. The coyote gnarled at my dog and scratched him. It did not care that all these people were around.”
Selvana had to rush her dog to emergency animal care and incurred $1,300 in medical costs.
Her pup hasn’t been doing well in the days following the incident.
“He hasn’t slept since Monday, that’s my biggest worry,” she said. “He’s such a happy, playful dog. Now, when I say ‘walk,’ he literally has the look of fear. I have to carry him out because he’s just shaking. I haven’t been able to walk by that park since. We’re both on high alert.”
Having lived in the area for six years, Selvana said the coyotes were never an issue until recently — and she too is pointing the finger at the decision-makers behind the Ford-approved demolition of Ontario Place.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous they didn’t do their due diligence and look into the ramifications of taking away their habitat,” she alleged. “It’s completely displaced them, which is what’s causing their behaviour to change. Coyotes were quite skittish to humans before and now they’re comfortable walking across the bridge with humans everywhere. It’s extremely concerning.”
Dog owners taking their pets out for walks in Massey Harris Park, Coronation Park or on Crawford Street are on especially high alert, as those areas appear to have become hotspots for reported coyote sightings in recent weeks.
Although the ministry has provided its own evidence suggesting coyotes didn’t need the West Island for resources, the Coyote Safety Coalition doesn’t think the timing of the Ontario Place demolition and the reported increase of coyote aggression in the area is a coincidence.
The challenges ahead
According to the Toronto Wildlife Centre, the coyote situation in Liberty Village and Fort York was caused by human actions, such as habitat destruction and the feeding of wild coyotes.
The Toronto Wildlife Centre could not verify if coyotes ever lived on West Island prior to the Ontario Place construction.
Heather Reid, the centre’s head wildlife veterinarian, called the allegations of coyote displacement from West Island a “hot potato topic.”
Reid said the demolition is “one of several plausible causes” for coyote presence in Liberty Village.
In a post to Facebook this week, the organization said it has received many messages suggesting that the coyotes in the area should be humanely trapped, relocated or killed. The wildlife centre does not support any of those options.
“We can emphatically say that ‘humanely’ trapping them is extremely difficult and relocating them would be an inhumane death sentence,” the post reads.
“Furthermore, to consider killing the coyotes (which we do NOT support) without changing the human behaviours that led to this problem in the first place would be tremendously unfair to the coyotes, and will not prevent the conflict from happening again.”
Instead, the wildlife centre said it supports “eradicating problematic human behaviours, continuing to provide information to the public, and allowing the coyotes time to potentially disperse from the area.”
During a town hall this week, the Coyote Safety Coalition secured city commitments for more staff and an additional night shift for patrols from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., starting this weekend.
Increased hours of patrols, improved reporting through the city’s 311 service and ongoing lighting and fencing assessments in problematic areas were also agreed upon.
Residents like Selvana hope more solutions are on the way.
“I want a timeline,” she said. “I don’t want to hear, ‘This is what we’re working on, we hear your concerns, let's sit around and chat and we’ll take it back.’ None of that. We need action.”
