Police Expected to OK Shooting of Rabbits

Hundreds of wild rabbits could be shot to death at Leisure World under a plan expected to be approved by police this week.

Despite a local ordinance prohibiting the discharge of firearms or compressed-air guns within city limits, Capt. Gary Maiten, a spokesman for the Seal Beach Police Department, said Monday, “It is our intent to grant the permit [for the shootings] within the next 48 hours.”

The planned rabbit hunt represents the latest skirmish in a decades-long battle to eradicate or reduce the large community of rabbits that has thrived at the retirement community for years.

As long as anyone can remember, said Jack Holloway, president of Mutual 15, one of several independently governed Leisure World areas, hundreds of wild cottontails have lived there.

For years, their numbers have been kept in check by an outside pest-control company that routinely trapped and poisoned them, Holloway said.

Lately, though, the rabbits have been refusing to take the poisoned bait, apparently due to an abundance of grass and flowers to eat.

So the pest-control company requested permission to shoot them with pellet guns. Last week, Holloway’s mutual became the latest of several areas in the retirement community to say yes.

“We’re being overrun with rabbits,” he said. “This year was terrible. The droppings are all over the place, and our residents, some of them in their 90s, are tracking it into their houses.”

Ernie Taylor, director of landscaping at the site, said he has seen as many as 70 rabbits on the lawn in a single day. “I get lots of complaints,” he said. “The rabbits eat the vegetation and poop all over the place. Enough is enough.”

And Wil Sargent, vice president of Mutual 15, said the infestation has been especially frustrating to the community’s many amateur gardeners.

“You can’t grow many varieties of flowers because the rabbits will eat them right down to the stem,” he said. “The only flowers you can grow are the ones that taste or smell bad.”

Police last week stopped the pest controllers from shooting the rabbits, saying the company needed special permission from the chief of police to circumvent the city’s anti-firearm ordinance.

Since then, Maiten said, the Police Department’s research has revealed that state law does allow for the shooting of certain “fur-bearing mammals,” including rabbits, by licensed exterminators.

“We researched it and consulted with our city attorneys before making the decision,” he said.

“I know of no prior granting of this kind of permit because it’s never been requested.”

Plans now call for at least two licensed exterminators to shoot the rabbits with pellet guns late at night later this month.

According to Holloway, community reaction has been almost evenly split.

“It’s a love-hate relationship,” he said. “Half the people love them and half hate them. I would say it’s a 50-50 tossup.”

Initial plans to poison the rabbits in 1992 met with strong criticism from residents and animal-rights activists. Leisure World officials hope the planned shoot will go much more smoothly.

“There will always be rabbits here,” Sargent said. “All we’re trying to do is control the problem to where you don’t have to step around them anymore.”