Anti-Fox Drive Should Continue, Report Says : Wildlife: A federal study on protecting the rare birds in the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station refuge also suggests introducing coyotes to ward off red foxes and other predators.

The trapping and killing of the red fox to protect endangered birds at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station should continue, but measures should be taken to improve and protect the birds’ nesting grounds, according to a federal environmental report released Friday.

A federal judge in 1988 ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Navy to prepare the report after an animal rights group sued to halt a program to trap foxes.

Since 1986, at least 275 foxes have been removed from the 1,000-acre National Wildlife Refuge on the base.

Federal officials began trapping the animals after counting only five pairs of the light-footed clapper rail in the area. The numbers of another endangered bird, the least tern, had dwindled to precariously low levels a few years earlier.

The primary culprit is the red fox, a non-native animal that was introduced to the area earlier this century and had begun showing up on the refuge in increasing numbers during the early 1980s, preying on the birds and especially their eggs.

The study, conducted by federal biologists, recommends continuing the trapping and building fences to protect the bird’s nesting sites but also suggests adding two new elements to the program.

One measure calls for improving the saltwater wetlands where the birds live by channeling more water into the marsh and restoring vegetation used in nesting. The report also recommends looking into the possibility of reintroducing coyotes, which formerly roamed the area, as a natural way of keeping the red fox under control.

“By reestablishing the native top carnivore, the coyote . . . it is envisioned that non-native red foxes and other (predators), would be naturally suppressed to numbers with which the endangered species can thrive,” the report said.

Joe Donaldson, an environmental planner with the Fish and Wildlife Service, said his agency and the Navy would decide by the end of October whether to accept the report’s recommendations.

Donaldson said the idea to reintroduce coyotes required further study.

“We’re not going to go out there and turn some coyotes loose on the refuge without researching it,” he said.

Hal Baerg, president of the local Animal Lovers Volunteer Assn., on Friday called such a solution to the problem “laughable.”

“The coyotes would eat the birds,” he said. “They’re North America’s most successful predator.”

Donaldson, however, said studies of other sites have shown that coyotes and the endangered birds can live together. Either the coyotes have little taste for light-footed clapper rails or they simply cannot catch them, he said.

Baerg said the group’s lawsuit to stop the trapping “is very much alive.” He added that his group will try to have U.S. District Judge Robert J. Kelleher, who earlier refused to halt the trapping program, declare the environmental report inadequate.

The report, he said, does not look seriously enough at the simplest solution: building better fences to keep the foxes and other predators out.

Donaldson said a fence large enough to protect all of the birds’ habitat would be too expensive and still would not guarantee protection of the birds.

“You can’t design a fence that’s going to be 100% effective,” he said. “All it takes is one fox to get in there for one night and you would easily destroy one season’s productivity (of birds) in one night.”