article_snippet.sent: Police captured coyote who led Police on a chase through downtown New York City on Saturday.
article_snippet.sent: it is not known whether it was the same coyote that was spotted in Manhattan's Riverside Park on Wednesday.
article_snippet.sent: At least four coyotes have been spotted around Manhattan so far this year, and one was seen clambering around on the roof of a Queens bar before disappearing, says Sarah Aucoin, the director of Battery Park City's Urban Park Rangers program.
article_snippet.sent: Three of the animals were captured in Manhattan and released in Bronx parks with established coyote populations, Sarah Aucoin, the director of the city's Urban Park Rangers program said.
article_snippet.sent: There's no firm count of coyotes or sightings in Battery Park City, but the population is probably at least in the teens, says wildlife biologist Chris Nagy, a co-founder of a study group called the Gotham Coyote Project and the research director at the Mianus River Gorge in Bedford, New York.
article_snippet.sent: With some coyotes ensconced and breeding in the Bronx, others are likely heading into Manhattan this spring to seek others own turf, said coyote project co-founder Mark Weckel, a conservation biologist at the American Museum of Natural History.
article_snippet.sent: Coyotes were once creatures of Midwestern plains and southwestern deserts.
article_snippet.sent: But Coyotes have dramatically expanded Coyotes range in the last two centuries, partly because of declines in Coyotes predators, such as wolves and cougars, experts say.
article_snippet.sent: Although coyotes have been hunted for sport and killed as threats to livestock, livestock're now found from coast to coast.
article_snippet.sent: There are an estimated 30,000 in New York state, where they were first noted in the 1930s, the state Department of Environmental Conservation says.