Coyotes are found across nearly all of North America, from northern Alaska to Central America. They live in every U.S. state except Hawaii and occupy every Canadian province. Their range today is vastly larger than it was just a few centuries ago, and it continues to expand southward into the tropics.
How Coyotes Spread Across the Continent
Before 1700, coyotes were restricted to the prairies and deserts of Mexico and central North America. They were grassland animals, most at home in shortgrass plains and dry sagebrush country. That began to change as European settlers reshaped the landscape. Widespread logging opened up eastern forests, agriculture fragmented dense woodlands into patchwork habitat, and the extermination of wolves removed the coyote’s main competitor. Coyotes moved into the gaps.
Over the next two centuries, they pushed steadily east and north. By the mid-1900s they had colonized most of the eastern United States and southeastern Canada. Today their range stretches from the arctic tundra of northern Alaska all the way south to Guatemala and Belize, with isolated records in Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. That north-to-south span covers thousands of miles and dozens of climate zones, a testament to the coyote’s ability to eat almost anything and thrive almost anywhere.
Every U.S. State but One
Coyotes now live in all 49 continental U.S. states. Hawaii is the only holdout, separated by 2,400 miles of open ocean. In the lower 48, there is no state where coyotes are absent. They are well established in Alaska too, where they range into tundra habitat far above the Arctic Circle.
The eastern expansion is especially striking. States like New York, Massachusetts, and Florida had no coyotes at all 100 years ago. Now they support healthy breeding populations. In many eastern states, coyotes are the largest wild predator remaining.
Habitats Coyotes Occupy
The USDA Forest Service lists coyotes in more than 30 distinct habitat types across the continent. That list includes nearly every major ecosystem you can name: desert shrubland, alpine meadows, tallgrass prairie, redwood forests, spruce-fir woodland, oak-hickory forest, longleaf pine, sagebrush steppe, chaparral, swamp forest, and annual grasslands. They evolved as plains animals but have proven capable of succeeding in virtually any plant community.
In mountain regions, coyotes range from low desert valleys up through montane forests and into alpine zones above the treeline. In the East, they use a mix of farmland, second-growth forest, and suburban edges. In the Southwest, they remain common in the arid scrublands where they’ve always thrived. The only habitats that consistently exclude them are large expanses of unbroken dense forest with resident wolf packs, and even those barriers are shrinking.
Coyotes in Cities and Suburbs
Urban coyotes are no longer a novelty. They live in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Denver, Portland, and dozens of other metro areas. In Chicago alone, researchers with the Urban Coyote Research Project estimate roughly 4,000 coyotes live within the metropolitan area. A long-term study tracking 214 Chicago coyotes between 2013 and 2021 produced a surprising finding: coyotes in the most densely populated human neighborhoods actually survived longer than those in greener, less developed areas. The likely explanation is that dense urban zones have fewer of the threats that kill rural coyotes, particularly vehicles on high-speed roads and other predators.
New York City offers a good case study of how urban colonization unfolds. Coyotes first appeared in the Bronx in the 1990s, likely traveling south along forested river corridors from upstate New York. For years they remained mostly Bronx residents, but younger generations have since spread into Queens, Manhattan, and Staten Island. They den in parks, cemeteries, and patches of scrubby woodland, hunting rats, rabbits, Canada geese, and fruit.
Suburban areas are even more hospitable. The mix of open lawns, garden edges, and scattered tree cover creates excellent coyote habitat with abundant food sources: rodents, pet food left outdoors, fallen fruit, and garbage. Most suburban coyotes are rarely seen because they shift their activity to nighttime hours in areas with heavy human foot traffic.
Central America and the Southern Frontier
The southernmost edge of coyote range is still advancing. Coyotes are well documented across Mexico and have pushed through the tropical forests of Mesoamerica into Guatemala and Belize. Scattered records exist from Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, though researchers suspect the low number of sightings in those countries reflects limited survey effort rather than true absence. Deforestation and expanding agriculture in Central America are creating the same open, fragmented landscapes that helped coyotes colonize the eastern United States, so further southward movement is expected.
Why Their Range Keeps Growing
Three factors explain why coyotes have been so successful at spreading. First, they are true omnivores. A coyote’s diet can include deer fawns, mice, insects, berries, corn, watermelon, pet food, and garbage, shifting with whatever is locally abundant. Second, they reproduce quickly. A female can have a litter of five to seven pups each spring, and young coyotes disperse long distances to find new territory, sometimes traveling over 100 miles. Third, they tolerate human activity better than almost any other predator their size. Rather than avoiding people entirely, they adjust their schedules, staying active at dawn, dusk, and overnight while resting in hidden spots during busy daytime hours.
Wolves historically kept coyote numbers in check by killing them outright and competing for prey. The near-total elimination of wolves from the lower 48 states removed that pressure, opening vast territory. Even in areas where wolves have been reintroduced, coyotes persist along the edges. They are smaller, more flexible, and better suited to human-modified landscapes than their larger relatives.