Illinois holds 2344 coyote records, one of the deepest totals in this atlas, and the county map tells an unusual story: Cook County alone accounts for 939, more than the next five counties combined, with DuPage, Lake, and Will close behind. The Chicago region’s forest preserves and green corridors carry as much of the record as the state’s wild southern tip.
A prairie animal that took to the city
The coyote was an animal of open country long before it was an urban one, and Illinois still shows both lives. Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie and Goose Lake Prairie hold records from restored grassland, Shawnee National Forest from the wooded hills at the state’s far end, and the Cook County preserves from city neighborhoods where coyotes have lived and been studied for decades. The common thread is edge, cover to rest in beside open ground to hunt, and Chicago supplies that arrangement in abundance. City coyotes shift their activity toward night hours, so even where they are common, most residents know them by a shape crossing a street at dusk or a chorus answered by sirens.
A winter peak with a reason
January leads the monthly totals, with late winter and early spring close behind. That is breeding season, when pairs defend territories and answer each other with howls that carry through bare timber and across frozen fields, making an animal that is present all year suddenly audible to everyone nearby.
Status in Illinois
NatureServe ranks the coyote S5, Secure, in Illinois, and the species is native to its Illinois range. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous in the state.
Full species profile
