Hunt for Solution Is On in Coyote Controversy : Trapping: L.A. officials will review ban in face of complaints, but a look at 27 other cities shows the method to be ineffective.

The nocturnal howls that awoke Lana Kuhlen from a dead sleep five months ago signaled a change in her Woodland Hills neighborhood and launched her into the midst of a contentious citywide debate over the merits of wild animal trapping.

Coyotes soon began to feast on her neighbor’s ducks, chickens and cats, leaving the carcasses on neighborhood lawns. Finally, a determined coyote scaled a six-foot fence to eat Kuhlen’s own chicken.

“It’s a huge problem, it really is,” said Kuhlen, who lives in the flatlands of Woodland Hills, far from the traditional rural habitat of the coyote. “I kinda feel like we have become the fast food capital for coyotes out here.”

In the past year, Kuhlen’s complaints have been echoed many times over by distressed west San Fernando Valley residents, prompting the Los Angeles Board of Animal Regulation Commissioners to review its 10-month-old ban on coyote trapping.

At the heart of that review will be a dilemma with which cities throughout Southern California have struggled for years: Can trapping and killing coyotes put an end to coyote problems, or is a public education program more effective?

If Los Angeles officials look to other Southern California cities for guidance, they will find that most municipalities faced with coyote problems use traps on a limited basis, relying primarily on educating the public about how to coexist with Canis latrans.

Of 27 Southern California cities with large wildlife populations, none completely ban coyote trapping, according to interviews with officials at the eight animal control agencies that serve those cities.

Nonetheless, animal control officials from those agencies stress that trapping is at best an ineffective, short-term solution.

By one estimate, trapping is successful only 10% of the time. Often, the traps snare more pets than coyotes. Moreover, when a coyote is killed, the remaining coyotes in the area tend to fill the void, usually with larger litters.

“I don’t think trapping is effective,” said Marsha Wyatt, a state officer with the Pomona Valley Humane Society, which provides animal control services to 11 cities in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. “When you move one adult coyote out . . . two juveniles will move in.”

In Pasadena, animal control officials tried coyote trapping on a large-scale basis about six years ago but found that only sick or injured coyotes were caught in the traps. The healthy coyotes that preyed on pets escaped.

“They are too smart,” said Alicia Goddard, a spokeswoman for the Pasadena Humane Society. “They didn’t get the name ‘wily coyote’ for nothing.”

Pasadena still traps and kills coyotes, she said, but only when a coyote is identified as a repeated threat to pets and people. In recent years, however, there have been few such calls-- which Goddard attributes to the agency’s education efforts.

Pasadena and other cities distribute brochures and pamphlets--sometimes attached to utility bills--to provide tips to residents on how to avoid coyote problems. Educational programs warn residents to put pets and pet food indoors at night, to fence yards and to keep garbage can lids secure--thus cutting off the coyote’s food supply.

Several cities have produced local cable access shows to convey such information. Others mail information directly to new residents of hillside communities. In Laguna Beach, people who live in areas with coyote problems are not allowed to adopt cats from the city’s shelters unless they promise that the cat will be kept indoors.

Animal control officials say even such aggressive measures work only when entire neighborhoods take the precautions seriously. One household that leaves food out can create problems for everyone, they say.

“I think public education is a reasonable approach but (expecting) . . . everyone to comply is overly optimistic,” said Richard Wightman, deputy agricultural commissioner for the Los Angeles County Agriculture Commission, which provides animal control services to 12 cities.

The controversy over coyote trapping in Los Angeles was sparked in June, 1993, when the Board of Animal Regulation Commissioners voted, at the urging of animal rights advocates, to ban all trapping of coyotes by city employees. Instead, the panel decided to launch its own educational program. The city printed about 5,000 brochures titled “Co-Existing With the Coyote,” which are available at animal-control and council district offices, and is producing a cable access program on the subject.

During a 12-month period before the trapping ban, residents lodged 511 coyote complaints with the city, according to the Animal Regulation Department. During the same period, coyotes were blamed for the deaths of 116 cats, 23 dogs and 50 other pets, mostly in the West Valley and West Los Angeles, the department said. In that same period, the city trapped and killed 34 coyotes citywide.

But after trapping was stopped, complaints about coyote sightings and attacks on pets rose. West Valley residents complain that coyotes have become so brazen that they enter back yards to stalk and kill pets in broad daylight. One Woodland Hills man says that in December a coyote came within six feet of his toddler son before the animal was chased away.

Animal control officers attribute the increase in coyote attacks and sightings not to the trapping ban, but to recent floods, wildfires, droughts and other forces that have driven the animals out of their hillside habitats and into urban neighborhoods in search of food.

In response to the escalating complaints, the Board of Animal Regulation Commissioners instructed its general manager to re-examine the city’s policy and draft recommendations to address the new coyote problems.

Because they are cowardly by nature, coyotes for the most part are not a threat to humans, wildlife biologists say. In Los Angeles County, animal regulation officials reported 15,276 animal bites on humans in 1993, none of them by coyotes.

But coyotes do grow bold when they begin to rely on neighborhood food sources and, in the process, lose their fear of people--much the way pigeons and squirrels in city parks become aggressive beggars, wildlife biologists say.

Coyotes also are opportunistic, the biologists say. They will not bother to hunt mice, rabbits or other traditional prey when they have easy access to cats, pet food, or table scraps in open garbage cans.

This was the conclusion of an unusual 1985 study by a Pomona College biologist who compared the habits of coyotes in Claremont, where city-issued garbage cans have permanently attached lids, and Glendale, where lids were not attached.

The biologist’s analysis of coyote droppings and the stomach contents of dead coyotes showed that coyotes in the Glendale area ate about 15 times as much human-generated garbage as coyotes in Claremont. He concluded that the tightly fitted, hinged lids on trash cans made the difference.

Despite criticism of trapping, some animal control officials say it has been successful to some degree with coyotes that regularly feed on domestic pets.

In San Clemente, for example, padded leg-hold traps were used to catch five coyotes about two years ago, following a reported coyote attack on a small girl and repeated attacks on pets in a particular neighborhood, said San Clemente Fire Chief Jene Begnell. In San Clemente, the Fire Department oversees animal control services.

Begnell said the trapping did not end all coyote attacks in the city, but it eliminated those coyotes that were believed responsible for most of the problems.

In fact, Begnell added, a wildlife biologist suggested that the coyotes that were causing the problems were probably the second generation of coyotes in that neighborhood to feed primarily on pets.

Most of the cities that still rely on trapping opt for cage-like box traps that lure animals in with food, considering the steel-jaw traps that clamp onto an animal’s leg inhumane. By law, the animals caught in the cages must either be released or shot at the site.

But box traps have limited success. In Burbank, where trapping is used to target coyotes that attack pets, box traps are steam-cleaned before they are used because coyotes can detect the scent of human beings on the traps. But even then, Burbank Animal Shelter Supt. Fred DeLange said the traps only catch a coyote about one out of every 10 times they are used.

Last year, DeLange said Burbank trapped and killed three coyotes. At the same time, he said, the traps also snared a dog and a cat.

Although such mixed results lead DeLange to concede that trapping does not end coyote attacks, he defended the policy as realistic. Education isn’t a foolproof solution either, he said, except in a perfect world.

“It’s never over, but this is the stand we have taken,” he said. “We wouldn’t have to go out and trap and shoot anything if everybody would do what they are supposed to.”