Image via Fairfax County Park Authority.

Officials from the Fairfax County Park Authority believe coyotes are breeding in a Northern Virginia park, and they are very excited.

Ellanor C. Lawrence Park’s resource management team has been working hard for proof of breeding pairs of coyotes in the park. This pup photo confirms it.

“This pup is probably around 12 weeks old. In early fall the family breaks up and each pup seeks its own home site. It probably is on its own from here on out. The first year of life is the toughest on coyotes,” said naturalist Tony Bulmer. “We will continue with this survey but I don’t expect to see him again.”

Ellanor C. Lawrence Park is located in Chantilly in Northern Virginia, which has seen a growing population of coyotes over the past few years. From a 2013 InsideNova piece:

Coyotes in Northern Virginia followed a specific route to get here from the north, and they had some encounters with wolves along the way, according to a 2011 study in the Journal of Mammalogy.

Researchers with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute studied the scat (or feces) of the area’s coyotes and found that they bred with the wolves of the Great Lakes. Thanks to their wolf DNA, Northern Virginia’s coyotes are larger than their western counterparts, said Paul Petersen, a wildlife biologist and chief of resource management at Prince William Forest Park.

And while wolf populations in the country continue to decline, the coyote population is booming.

No permit is required to kill coyotes in Virginia, where they are considered a nuisance animal, but rules are different in each county and city.