Taylor Mitchell

Mitchell's only album, For Your Consideration, was released in March 2009. Guest musicians on the album included Justin Rutledge, Lynn Miles, Suzie Vinnick, John Dinsmore, and Michael Johnston.[12] The album received a positive review from Exclaim!, with Eric Thom describing her as "definitively old school, if not world-weary", while Now Toronto described it as sounding "like it comes from someone of a completely different generation".[5][12]

1. "Don't Know How I Got Here" – 4:08
2. "For Your Consideration" – 3:13
3. "Clarity" – 4:18
4. "Ride Into the Sunset" – 4:14
5. "Fun While It Lasted" – 3:41
6. "Diamonds & Rust" (Joan Baez)– 4:06
7. "Trick of the Light" – 5:00
8. "Secluded Roads" – 3:51
9. "Shelter from the Storm" – 4:31
10. "Love and Maple Syrup" (Gordon Lightfoot)– 3:18

There was speculation by wildlife experts that Mitchell might have initiated contact by trying to feed coyotes or by disturbing a den with young.[8] Various other proposed explanations why the unusual attack occurred included that the coyotes might have been larger and bolder than normal coyotes because they were crosses with wolves or domestic dogs, rabid, starving, or protecting a carcass.[16] None of these suggestions were subsequently borne out, causing a reassessment of potential risk to humans from coyote attacks. It was also thought by experts that Mitchell may have inadvertently provoked a predation behaviour by running away, though a coyote may have been behind her when she was confronted by the oncoming ones.[8][14][17][18]

As is standard practice when an animal remains at large after killing a human, wardens searched for the attacker animal in the vicinity, where five or six coyotes were believed to live.[8] Mitchell's mother issued a statement saying that her daughter would not have wanted her death to result in the extermination of the coyotes: “We take a calculated risk when spending time in nature’s fold — it’s the wildlife’s terrain,” she wrote. “When the decision had been made to kill the pack of coyotes, I clearly heard Taylor’s voice say, ‘Please don’t, this is their space.’ She wouldn’t have wanted their demise, especially as a result of her own."[19]

Nonetheless, hours after the incident, while the trail was closed to the public, a female coyote that acted aggressively was killed by a warden keeping watch at the washhouse location. Three others within 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) of the Skyline trail were caught in leg-hold traps and killed before a large male weighing 42 pounds (19 kg) was similarly dispatched 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) away on November 14. Scientific investigation of the carcasses determined that three, including the first and last accounted for, were linked to the attack on Mitchell by her blood on their coats and other forensic evidence. The large male coyote was found to have been both the dominant lead coyote photographed on the access road and the one found standing over Mitchell; coat markings in the photographs identified its carcass, which also contained pellets from the shotgun of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police constable who fired while at the scene. The dead coyotes not linked to the attack may have been packmates of the attackers.[8] The large male and the female may have been a breeding pair; both were related to the other attack-implicated coyote.[9][13][14][17][18]

In mid-November 2009, a coyote came up behind a couple walking in the park approaching so closely that the man hit it on the head with a walking stick.[9] Park conservation managers and scientists opposed a general cull on the grounds that coyotes have the ability to reproduce quickly, and culling would be likely to have no impact, or the opposite of the desired effect. This reasoning assumes that animals removed from the local gene pool by a cull would have the same propensity to fear humans as those coyotes that avoided being caught and killed.[20][21][9] In April 2010, Nova Scotia declared a $20 bounty on coyotes, but this did not apply within the park.[22] Visitors were asked to report encounters with coyotes. Ten months after Mitchell's death a sixteen-year-old girl who went camping with her parents at Broad Cove in Ingonish was bitten twice on the head by a coyote.[23] A scientific study found that though usually unseen, coyotes were often in proximity to humans. Individual coyotes that are not conditioned by nonlethal aversion measures and fail to avoid humans are killed.[24][25][26]

In 2022 a study by Stan Gehrt, wildlife ecologist at Ohio State University, was released that revealed the coyotes had been living on a diet of moose rather than their typical diet of smaller animals. It was concluded that the unavailability of smaller prey led the coyotes to become accustomed to large targets leading them to see the young woman as a potential food source.[27]