The “ghosts of the Plains” are fast becoming shadowy denizens of downtown. Stan Gehrt has been tracking Chicago’s urban coyote population for a decade and is now getting answers to some of their great mysteries, thanks to GPS collars, wearable night-vision cameras and stable-isotope analysis of coyote whiskers. 

Coyotes thrive in the city, where food is abundant and where the automobile, which they study closely and deftly avoid, is their only threat. Downtown Chicago is providing a laboratory for study of the largest predator to successfully exploit and colonize the urban core, yielding valuable insight to guide urban wildlife management.