SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
There have been many daring escapes from Alcatraz, the notorious prison off the coast of San Francisco. But what about a daring escape to Alcatraz? In a tourist video shot last month, you see a coyote paddling through the frigid waters of San Francisco Bay.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Is that a seal?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: It's a coyote.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: What?
DETROW: And then, scrawny and shivering and as desperate as Nicolas Cage kneeling on the ground at the end of "The Rock"...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: You can do it, buddy.
DETROW: The coyote clamors onto the rocky shoreline of Alcatraz. Weeks later, another sighting confirmed the coyote is alive. It is the only time a coyote has set paw on the island - that we know of - since 1972. Ecologist Christopher Schell at the University of California, Berkeley, has been following this saga and joins me now. Welcome.
CHRISTOPHER SCHELL: Thank you, Scott, for having me.
DETROW: I mean, any guess as to why a coyote would have made this swim across the bay? It's so - there's so many currents. It's so cold. It's such a long distance.
SCHELL: Right. So the swim itself was certainly turbulent. You know, it swam over a mile to get from the peninsula of San Francisco to Alcatraz, but it was likely doing so because of territorial pressures. So coyotes, when they get into a particular space, they set up shop as resident individuals. They then claim that space. And other dispersing individuals then need to sort of figure out their way otherwise. So this animal was likely a dispersing individual trying to look for a territory, not able to find it in San Francisco, and made the arduous decision to say, well, my best effort at trying to find territory and find a mate is to swim over to the island.
DETROW: I guess not knowing the history of Alcatraz in doing that.
SCHELL: Right.
DETROW: But, you know, we saw a picture last week of the coyote. How does it appear to be doing, based on what you can tell?
SCHELL: Right. So all accounts when the animal got to the island were that the animal was looking sickly, perhaps very cold, of course, from swimming, but that they weren't entirely sure whether or not it would make it. And then a couple of weeks later, there were photos of this animal looking a lot healthier, better body condition, a little bit more plump, likely because it was able to have access to both the natural prey items that were on that island - the pocket gophers, the field mice - but they may also be eating some of the birds of conservation concern - the cormorants or other species that are on that island.
So chances are that animal is OK, but then it does pose this existential sort of question - are we going to allow the animal to stay on the island, even though it poses a potential predatory threat to the birds of conservation concern?
DETROW: Before we get to that point, has anybody named this coyote?
SCHELL: Yes. They've named the coyote Floyd.
DETROW: Oh.
SCHELL: Ironically, after Floyd, the getaway driver for Bonnie and Clyde.
DETROW: (Laughter) What's going to happen with Floyd next? Like, what - any sense what the National Park Service is doing here and how you think that could work?
SCHELL: So, many of my colleagues with the National Park Service have chatted about relocating that animal because of the potential predation pressure that it poses to the individual and possibly relocating it to an undisclosed location in the Bay Area.
DETROW: So did we know that coyotes were this good at swimming that they could swim a mile across the San Francisco Bay, or is this a surprise in any way?
SCHELL: So it's a both/and. This was certainly a surprise, especially for the Bay Area, because Bay waters are turbulent. The distance that the animal swam was not trivial - 1.25 miles was the estimate. That's a pretty large and long distance for an animal to swim. However, it should be noted that there have been other reports, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, that have demonstrated that animals have taken off from the mainland in Tacoma or around Seattle to make it to nearby islands, and the distance there is longer than the distance that the animal swam here in the Bay Area.
That notwithstanding, this was a Herculean effort, and we can't really bury that. This animal took all of its energy and all of its gumption to get from San Francisco and the peninsula over to Alcatraz, so commend that dude.
DETROW: Excellent. Shout out to Floyd.
SCHELL: Shout out to Floyd.
DETROW: (Laughter) I mean, it feels lose-lose saying this out loud, but it does sound like this is a wily coyote.
SCHELL: Yes. And I love the dad joke there, Scott. Appreciate you using that (laughter).
DETROW: Leaning in. That's Christopher Schell, an assistant professor at the department of environmental science, policy and management at UC Berkeley. Thank you so much.
SCHELL: Thanks again, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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