A Coyote Catch-22 : Wildlife: A city ban on trapping will be reconsidered. But some animal-control officials say capturing and killing doesn’t help much.

The nocturnal howls that awoke Lana Kuhlen from a dead sleep five months ago signaled a change in her Woodland Hills neighborhood.

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

The experiences did more than wake Kuhlen up. They launched her into a contentious citywide debate over the merits of wild animal trapping.

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

In the past year, Kuhlen’s complaints have been echoed repeatedly 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 question that cities throughout Southern California have struggled with for years: Can trapping and killing coyotes put an end to coyote problems? Or is public education about coexisting with coyotes 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 teaching residents the mechanics of getting along with Canis latrans.

Of 27 Southern California cities with large wildlife populations, none completely ban coyote trapping. Yet 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 humane officer with the Pomona Valley Humane Society. “When you move one adult coyote out . . . two juveniles will move in.”

In Pasadena, animal control officials tried coyote trapping on a large scale about six years ago but found that only sick or injured coyotes were caught. Pasadena and other cities distribute brochures and pamphlets warning residents to put pets and pet food indoors at night, to fence yards and to keep garbage can lids secure, thus cutting off the coyotes’ food supply.

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 trapping of coyotes by city employees.

Instead, the panel decided to launch an educational program. The city printed about 5,000 brochures titled “Co-Existing With the Coyote,” and it is producing a cable TV program on the subject.

In the 12 months 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 San Fernando 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 it was chased away. Over the weekend animal regulation commissioner Lynne Exe renewed her call for a resumption of coyote trapping after the discovery of a coyote wounded by gunshot in the back yard of another Woodland Hills home.

Animal control officers attribute the increase in coyote attacks and sightings not to the trapping ban, but to recent floods, wildfires, droughts and other events 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.

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 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.

In an unusual 1985 study, a Pomona College biologist 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 coyote carcasses showed that coyotes in the Glendale area ate about 15 times as much human-generated garbage as coyotes in Claremont. He concluded that tightly fitted trash can lids made the difference.