California Antis Tout “Coexisting” with Urban Coyotes over Public Safety

Animal rights extremists are at it again in California, this time promoting no-kill management of the state’s most abundant predator: coyotes—even when the coyotes in question are urban based and pose a threat to people and pets. While this may not seem like a direct threat to hunting to some hunters, make no mistake: The larger aspirations of these anti-hunting extremist groups to shut down hunting are being fulfilled with this newest approach.

California animal rightists, including the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), spent the summer of 2016 and the early fall petitioning Los Angeles officials to keep in place the city’s non-lethal management for problem coyotes. A key city-council committee accepted the recommendation in October. Odds are high that the full city council will rubber-stamp that recommendation.

This, despite that coyotes are increasingly a threat to people within Los Angeles city limits. According to the Daily Breeze, “Of particular concern for many residents … is a recent increase in coyote bites on humans, including an attack on a 6-year-old boy in Irvine on Oct. 9. It was one of four human bites reported in Irvine since June,” according an Oct. 17 Orange County Register (OCR) article that attributed the information to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Coyotes also attacked three people at a city park this past August, and, as noted by the OCR, “In 2015, several attacks on humans were reported in and around Elysian Park in the city of Los Angeles.”

Not good, you say, yet these events continue to occur inside Los Angles city limits. Some say that whether here or in any other California city, hunting these problem ‘yotes would not be allowed anyway so why should hunters care?

Here’s why. “The radical anti-hunting organizations like the Humane Society of the United States seek to fundraise off any animal they can humanize,” explained Rick Travis, programs director for the California Rifle and Pistol Association (CRPA), an NRA state affiliate. “And, their very efforts—including this recent push to make coyotes seem non-threatening—are destroying true wildlife conservation in the process.”

Coyotes, Travis noted, proliferate unnaturally in urban settings, thanks to abundant food and water—and a lack of predators. Rather than manage them with traditional conservation practices like trapping, HSUS has been working steadily to convince California municipalities to let them be and create a "coexistence" model.

In Los Angles, for example, the city will pay for increased community outreach and education about how to safely co-exist with these wild predators—even as coyotes’ attacks on people and pets continue to rise.

The NRA and the CRPA have been fighting against such extremist ideas, including the “rewilding” plan I reported on previously for the NRA Hunters’ Leadership Forum website, NRAHLF.org being pushed by the HSUS and similar groups at the state-government level. The move calls for reintroducing predators to California and limiting or stopping the hunting of those predators already within the state’s borders—to “coexist” with them and let nature take its course without human “interference.” 

“This is why hunters and true wildlife conservationists have to stand in direct opposition to these radical anti-hunting groups, to preserve wildlife and hunting as a management tool for future generations,” Travis said.