On October 27, 2009, the first ever documented adult fatality by
coyotes occurred on this hiking trail, fatally injuring Canada's young country folk singer
Taylor Mitchell while hiking the trail alone. This serious event occurred six minutes after another hiker photographed two brazen coyotes. Taylor was taken to Sacred Heart Community Health Centre in
Chéticamp and then airlifted by a helicopter ambulance to Halifax's
Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre, where she died after midnight from extreme blood loss and her injuries. The resource managers of Cape Breton National Park and the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resource's Wildlife manager confirmed via DNA tests that the offending coyotes were killed within the next six days. An earlier non-fatal attack occurred on July 14, 2003, when a seventeen-year-old American girl was bitten multiple times while hiking with her parents.
Aftermath Park's Canada, NSERC, and several other academic collaborators funded a five-year research project to better understand contributing factors to this extreme coyote behaviour. Warning signs were posted at the entrance of all hiking trails to educate visitors how to respond when in coyote habitat. A coyote bit a sixteen-year-old girl on the top of her head twice on August 9, 2010. She was camping with her parents on the eastern end of the park in
Ingonish. The teenage girl was taken to a hospital for stitches and treatment to prevent rabies. ==Restoration of the boreal forest==