San Clemente Tries Cage Traps to Snare Coyotes

In a continuing effort to curb coyote problems in the Forster Ranch community, animal control officers this week changed trapping techniques.

On Wednesday, city animal control officials replaced leg traps set in the hills behind the north San Clemente housing tract with several large cage traps baited with peanut butter, San Clemente Fire Department spokesman Jack L. Stubbs Jr. said. Should a coyote go for the bait, the cage door will close on it.

Current concerns about coyotes stem largely from a May 15 attack on a 5-year-old girl who had been playing in the back yard of her family’s Forster Ranch home. In addition, numerous family pets in the neighborhood have been killed by coyotes or reported missing.

In recent days, however, Stubbs said, coyote sightings and attacks on family pets have declined.

Since a private company hired by the city set leg traps earlier this month, three adult coyotes have been captured and killed by lethal injection.

All three of those, as well as two others that were killed by cars recently in another part of town, were free of rabies, Stubbs said.

It has been almost two weeks since a coyote has been caught in a leg trap. If the new traps, set by city animal control officers, do not catch any coyotes, officials will probably consider phasing out the program, Stubbs said.

“It wasn’t something that would go on indefinitely,” he said of the cage-trapping program.