With an uptick in coyote sightings in San Pedro this spring, Los Angeles City Councilman Joe Buscaino this week will ask the city’s Department of Animal Services to develop a more proactive management plan for the animals.
The city of Long Beach drew up such a plan late last year, providing guidelines for trapping and euthanizing the animals in some circumstances.
“We have a coyote issue developing in our district where cats, geese and other pets have gone missing,” Buscaino said. The report he’s requesting would explore “how to better address this issue with an ordinance or a policy action.”
Current practice calls for a defensive approach, relying exclusively on deterrence measures such as not providing any food for the animals and using “hazing” techniques to try to scare coyotes away from property lines.
Coyotes aren’t new to cities or suburbia. They’ve been migrating into more populated areas since the 1970s, usually existing quietly in the shadows.
But when coyotes become too habituated — and their population numbers increase — conflicts can arise.
It’s not really known how many coyotes are in California, said Robert M. Timm, retired director of UC Hopland Research and Extension Center, who provided input for the Long Beach coyote management plan last year.
Anecdotal evidence, he said, would indicate their numbers are up, but there are no firm statistics. Some experts estimate there are 750,000 coyotes in the state.
Management programs in cities can be helpful, said Timm, who has spent his career studying coyotes and other wildlife.
Trapping and removing some problem coyotes, for example, appears to send a message to the rest of the coyotes in the neighborhood, he said.
“If there are problem coyotes reported in a specific area and you go in and remove a few, it seems to wise up the rest of the coyotes and make them wary of people,” he said, adding that it appears to reduce coyote problems for months or even years in particular locations.
Timm said the animals appear to be doing well in their new, more populated habitats. “The suburbs are rich in food and they adapt very well to a variety of situations,” he said.
People wind up feeding coyotes unintentionally through fruit trees, bird feeders and garbage that is not well secured, he said.
Other wildlife — coyotes have no natural predators in suburbia — along with pet cats and dogs make up most of the urban coyote diet.
When coyotes are seen snatching pets or even just out walking and exploring during daylight hours, Timm said, they’ve already become dangerously habituated to people and could pose a threat to humans.
Other problems have been prevalent in Seal Beach and Orange County over the past few years. Last fall, a man and his 3-year-old son were bitten by a coyote in front of their house in Irvine.
In San Pedro, there have been numerous coyote sightings in recent weeks — spring is pup-rearing time, when coyotes are often more active and more visible. Several cats have been reported killed, including one that was caught on camera near 20th and Walker streets. San Pedro also offers plenty of natural habitat and cover, including a large network of deep canyons and ravines where coyotes can establish dens.
Buscaino spotted and photographed a coyote on his neighbor’s roof Monday morning, saying he’s now keeping a much closer eye on his own dog. A 6-foot fence typically is not a problem for coyotes to scale or get around.
And several residents in and around the Averill Park neighborhood where coyotes are being frequently seen in recent weeks are concerned following reports that they are feeding on the flocks of ducks and geese at the picturesque park.
“We used to have so many ducks and geese there. Not now,” said Rose Mary Ochoa who lives just a few blocks away. “(A coyote was) right in middle of our street at 11 in the morning and another was running down alley. They’re everywhere.”
Residents this week were trying to relocate two of the park’s beloved geese for safety.
The growing coyote issue, Timm said, is fraught with emotion. Many advocacy groups lobby against any kind of management efforts that use traps or euthanization. Relocation of the animals is illegal in California.
“We all have a soft spot in our hearts for wildlife, it’s why many of us went into the field,” Timm said.
But coyotes have become increasingly political and any proposed management plan for a city as large as Los Angeles will likely be hotly debated.
“It’s become a political problem, not a biological problem,” Timm said. “It’s a very contentious issue and not an easy one to deal with. ... We all have our individual feelings about it and it’s hard to separate that from what we know scientifically.”