Public Hearing Urged on Coyote Trappings

Los Angeles City Council members Laura Chick and Marvin Braude issued a letter this week urging city animal regulation officials to hold a public hearing in the San Fernando Valley to take public testimony on the controversial issue of coyote trapping.

The Board of Animal Regulation voted in June to ban the trapping of coyotes because of the program’s cost, protests by animal rights groups and concerns about the city’s liability in trapping coyotes.

A rash of coyote sightings has prompted the board to schedule a meeting Monday in City Hall to decide whether to reconsider the coyote trapping ban.

In the letter, Chick and Braude asked Mimi Robbins, president of the Board of Animal Regulation Commissioners, to hold a meeting in the West Valley, where numerous coyote sightings have been reported. They urged that the meeting, to take public testimony on the ban, be held by the end of January.

According to animal regulation officers, the increased sightings have been partly due to the end of trapping, an abundance of coyote food, such as mice and rabbits, and the wildfires that drove coyotes out of the hills and into urban areas.