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Each year, more than one million people make the trek to Alcatraz Island to visit the site of the prison that was home to some of America’s most hardened criminals. However, it recently got an unexpected visitor courtesy of what is believed to be the first coyote to arrive on the island.
The United States military established a fort on San Francisco’s Alcatraz Island in the 1850s. In 1934, it officially welcomed the first batch of prisoners who were sent to what was officially known as “Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary,” the supposedly escape-proof prison that housed notable names including Al Capone, Mickey Cohen, and Machine Gun Kelly.
In 1962, three men became the first (and only) prisoners to escape from “The Rock” after tunneling out of their cells and making their way into San Francisco Bay on a makeshift raft. They were never found, and while there’s a chance they survived the approximately 1.25-mile journey to the shores of San Francisco, authorities believed they drowned before they arrived.
Alcatraz was closed in 1963 and has been preserved as a tourist attraction that’s overseen by the National Park Service. It’s home to smaller species of animals, including birds, mice, and salamanders, but they were recently joined by one that has the potential to become its apex predator following the first documented coyote sighting on the island.
A coyote was filmed swimming to Alcatraz before becoming the first member of its species to set foot on the island
Coyotes were eradicated from San Francisco in the 1950s, but they made their grand return after being spotted in the Presidio (a 1,480-acre park near the Golden Gate Bridge) courtesy of a trapper who purportedly set them loose out of spite over a ban on leg-hold traps.
The canines have slowly but surely expanded their domain over the past couple of decades, and some of them have managed to establish a presence on Angel Island after successfully making the approximately two-thirds of a mile swim from the mainland.
However, there was no evidence to suggest Alcatraz had ever been graced by their presence until a tourist who was visiting the island on January 11th filmed one of the animals making its way toward the shore before climbing up on some rocks near the Agave Trail.
According to SFGATE, a spokesperson for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area believes that was an unprecedented development, saying:
“Coyotes can be commonly seen throughout our San Francisco and Marin parklands but never before on Alcatraz. This was the first time our park biologists observed anything like this.”
It’s unclear where the coyote came from, but based on where it arrived, it would appear it ended up in the water on the north shore of San Francisco before ending up on Alcatraz (it would have had to swim close to two miles if it had departed from Angel Island).
The video showed the shivering animal was clearly worse for wear after emerging from the frigid waters of the bay, and there are concerns it didn’t survive when you consider park rangers have not spotted it since its arrival was brought to their attention.
With that said, it would have plenty of prey to feast on in the form of the aforementioned fauna that already calls Alcatraz home, so here’s to hoping for a happy ending.