CLOSE-UP : Cry the Beloved Coyote

From the cute, kerchief-wearing canine that adorns jewelry to the real thing laid out dead on the hillsides of new subdivisions, the coyote is a true Southern California icon. Just ask Lila Brooks.

“The coyote arrived here during the Pleistocene epoch”--more than 10,000 years ago, says Brooks, 64. The Aztecs venerated it, the Cherokee called it the “Trickster” and admired its intelligence. These days though, coyotes are considered an enemy, routinely killed, their carcasses often put on display to deter other coyotes from entering new housing tracts or farmlands.

Brooks, a.k.a. “The Coyote Lady,” director of the Hollywood-based California Wildlife Defenders, finds this state of affairs deplorable. During the past 23 years, her lobbying efforts have resulted in four state regulations and a test ban in Los Angeles against the use of steel leg-traps, which she says cause coyotes and other animals to die a bloody, painful death. She also has persuaded the city councils of Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Burbank, Glendale, South Pasadena and Pasadena to pass ordinances imposing fines of up to $300 for feeding coyotes, which encourages them to forage in residential areas.

“I was recently attending a back-yard barbecue at a Bel-Air estate,” she says. “When the outside festivities were over, I watched from a window inside the house as 16 coyotes fed on leftover chicken and table scraps. The homeowner thought she was doing the animals a favor. She wasn’t. Coyotes were mollycoddled for too many years and lost their fear of man. Now their habitat is shrinking because of development, and without fear they are helplessly trapped by the same human species that once befriended them. It’s horrible.”

She advises pet owners who live in coyote territory to keep dogs and cats indoors at night and to keep woodpiles and shrubbery--where rodents would nest--tidy; rodents are a guaranteed coyote magnet. To shepherds who insist that they must kill the coyotes before the coyotes kill their herds, she suggests that a trained sheepdog or an alarm is much more effective and humane than a fence full of dead canines.

Brooks, a former hotel executive, makes no bones about devoting her life to the coyote. “I got up one morning and took one look around me and realized I was part of a selfish, greedy and all-consuming human race. Since I founded California Wildlife Defenders, I feel my existence is justified on this planet. Everyone wants to protect koala bears, but nobody cares about coyotes.”