Coyote Killings Part 2
I think I have the answer. Animal Services of Los Angeles did it.
The Times says (my bolds):
“When he woke up, the coyote was sitting there,” said Capt. Wendell Bowers of the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services. “Coyotes nip at each other when they want to be fed. This one was waiting for something to eat. It wasn’t trying to eat the man’s foot. It nipped at him.”
Bowers said there was no reliable information about a coyote attack last month that reportedly involved someone who was in the park after closing time.
Officer Gregory Randall, the department’s wildlife specialist, said the city’s procedure is to notify the California Department of Fish and Game after such encounters.
That agency, in turn, called the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which provided hunters.
First I called Chief Ranger Albert Torres, who I know fairly well, but he said he was “not allowed” to talk with anyone about the coyotes, and that Fish & Game were the “lead people.” He also said I might want to call Animal Services. Officer Randall never called me back, but I did get to talk with Captain Bowers, before I saw this article. He basically said the same things that are in the article – that both incidents were very minor.
I also called Senior Officer Mike McBride of Fish & Game. I’ve never been interrupted so often, shouted down, threatened (to hang up), and refused any information about a PR person before. F&G, someone there needs some sensitivity training! He said he had the medical reports, but “not at his desk.” He said the 2nd bite was so minor it was only a scratch and a small bruise – a bite wasn’t mentioned. He said the other report was also a nibble at a foot, at 5 pm a couple weeks before. (Someone from the city who wished to remain nameless said that the reason the first man didn’t report it is because…he works for the city and was goofing off, sleeping. )
When I asked McBride who here in LA actually reported it, he kept saying to blame him, that he took full responsibility. He said it was a 2 night “operation”, and 9 coyotes were killed, not 7.
He also said “it doesn’t matter what happened, whether they were bitten or not. It’s not normal for a coyote to go nearer to any human than 30 feet away.”
Thank you for that ridiculous piece of misinformation, Mr. McBride. Maybe you should come to SoCal sometime.
The real PR person for F&G never called back. Also spoke with Dr. Karen Ehnert, DVM, from the LA County Health Dept. who said it would be very very rare for any animal in Socal to have rabies. None for 10 years now. Just bats. :(
She said it certainly was not the Health Dept. who called Fish & Game. “Why would we ask them to kill animals? That would be useless, since we have no idea which coyote it was. ” Indeed. She said they report any animal bite to Animal Services.
I also talked with Larry Hawkins, from the USDA in Sacramento. He mentioned the state laws on killing coyotes that I linked to in my last post. He said they weren’t trapped, they were shot. 6 males and one female were shot Thursday. I assume the USDA is like most of the government, and believes in getting their money’s worth. I mean, they paid for the men to come down here, for their hotel. Why not make it 2 nights of killing, instead of one? And so 2 more were shot Friday. (for good measure.) They could have been shot with spotlights or infrared, he wasn’t sure.
When I ran regularly in the park, I thought there was a coyote den nearby, because every evening as it got darker they would magically appear next to the trail I ran on. They were never aggressive, and hung their heads if I looked at them. They moved out of the way for me. Still, I had read that a good thing is to have a little mint box with coins to shake if they got close. I was not going to run with that jangly thing, but I shook my keys a few times. No problem.
After one of those torrential rainstorms one winter – remember those? -the den actually got washed away on the top, so I could see the spaces where they slept. Tiny, like big enough for a large cat, 5 little cubby holes leading out from the main tunnel. And less than a yard from the trail. I can just imagine last week, when the USDA killers shot the dogs. There were at least 2 men. Was it a game? Who could bag the most? I assume they enjoy their work. What kind of howls went up from the coyotes left in the pack when they saw their family die, and smelled them, and heard the deadly crack? What was that night like for them, the family gone?And they themselves would die the next night.
If there are 50 coyotes in the Park, as Mr. Hawkins guessed, that’s 20% of our population gone. He told me they eat mostly rodents, as I had read, and also fruit and roadkill. They are the only predator in Griffith Park. (Although no one was able to tell me why our deer population never grows bigger, like back east, where deer are a big problem).
Someone in the Griffith Park Neighborhood Council sent me an email that someone sent to the media. Don’t know who this is, but the details are all right. I bolded the parts I think are important.
9 coyotes were killed by USDA officers 2 nights ago in Griffith Park because a man who was napping in an area where coyotes have been *fed by people on a regular basis ( *illegal activity as indicated by the signs in the area ) , was nipped on the foot by one.
This was not an attack. This was a demand by the coyote who is used to being fed by humans,to be fed. It is a natural behaviour of coyotes used to people feeding it and is often experienced by people who have cats.The same incident involving a man sleeping in Griffith Park and getting nipped by a coyote, happened 2 weeks ago. That man went to the hospital, and nothing was reported.
2 days ago, another man had the same occurance. Sleeping and getting nipped on the foot. The coyote, after letting him know he was hungry, sat down away from him and waited to be fed.
This man however contacted LAAS wildlife Officers and complained. The officer was imposed by law to contact higher authorities which in this case was the USDA.USDA officers responded by going to Griffith Park in the evening, setting up bait, and killing 9 coyotes as they came to eat. So much for all the knowledge we have of coyotes and nature. A paint ball in the side would have occomplished more, and no blood would
have been shed.
What an excellent suggestion. Scare them, not KILL them.
For prevention, everyone said not to feed them. Obviously true. However, no one brought up, except Dr. Ehnert, what I’ve complained about for years – either cover the trash cans, like in national parks, or EMPTY them. The picnic area after every weekend is DISGUSTING. The people there must have been brought up to be pigs. Every possible bag, bone, plastic trays, all so gross.
Many people have asked who to complain to. This started with Animal Services. Period. Bok is gone, so Kathleen Davis is current General Manager.
You might also have been disturbed to read about the 64,000 animals the USDA kills EVERY year in California alone. It’s almost too much to imagine. I’ll link to them below, too.
Last…we have an LA Times opinion which is generic and uninformed. Karin Kline’s info is copied from other articles. Her Opinion? Be rude to the coyotes. This nonsense is unacceptable in the most important paper on the west coast.
So: So, LA County Health Dept reported it to Animal Services. They made the call to ask Fish & Game to kill the coyotes. F&G called USDA to pay the killers, who spent 2 nights making a sport of it. Animal Services did a bad, bad thing.
Photo by John-Morgan.
Calif Fish & Game and good phone: 916 654 3821
USDA
Animal Services Call 213-482-9558 to get a real answer and the email. Ask for Kathleen Davis.
Donna Barstow
Griffith Park is the 2nd biggest park in the US, and I'm just the person to investigate it! I've lived here for over 25 years. I was part of the PROS Committee in Griffith Park Neighborhood Council and am on the Housing & Tenants Rights Committee in the Silver Lake NC. I'm in the LA Press Club, and you can find some of my articles in the LA Weekly and the Los Feliz Ledger. I'm a cartoonist for Parade Magazine, The New Yorker, LA Times, Slate, & most major media. Questions and contacts welcome.
13 Comments
Kristin Sabo
FISH AND GAME ordered the action, Donna. Animal Services was the local agency required to follow state policy.
I thought AGM Linda Barth was acting GM of Animal Services, but I could be wrong.
Kristin Sabo
Now that I have a little more time to do so, I can comment in depth:
I really don’t think it is beneficial in general to harp on the incident as a whole since it is complex. I think you need to parse the event carefully and identify specific issues you want to look at rather than the entire incident as you think it went down. You have made a great start on that. Let me see if I can help with some detail.
I volunteer in parks and I know a little about such things. In this case, people were supposedly bitten by coyotes, but they did not report it to the Department of Recreation and Parks (Park Rangers) or the Office of Public Safety.
They SHOULD have reported it to Park Rangers or OPS. Doing so might have created a different outcome had the department known about it right away and perhaps could have influenced the ensuing actions. They did not. It is unfortunate, but Rec and Parks had no knowledge of what was happening at this point in the chain of events.
One of the people bitten supposedly saw an MD and told the doctor they had been bitten by a wild animal. Any MD has legal reporting requirements – they can lose their medical license if they do not report certain things. One of those things is a wild animal bite. So the MD did what they were supposed to and called LA Co Department of Health, who then has related policies and who also has legal reporting requirements ==>> they call Fish and Game.
Fish and Game uses the policies you have been discussing and activates, utilizing the local animal services agency, in this case LA City Animal Services, to reduce the population and — using their knowledge of coyote behavior — to try to put some fear of humans back into this particular coyote population.
Think about it: The coyote population in Griffith has grown to rely on humans feeding them. Their biting was very rare before, but suddenly seems to have escalated. Who will be bitten next if some mitigation doesn’t happen very quickly? This is in the minds of the agencies who were involved and partly what has influenced their policies on these types of things. Right or wrong, this is the case.
Either during or after this point is when Rec and Parks finds out about this. So…. all of this happens outside Recreation and Parks. The parks department does not know anything about it until the very end, and quite honestly doesn’t even have any real jurisdiction over it. So please everyone, don’t point fingers at Rec and Parks. It is misguided blame.
The “fault”?
The “fault” in this chain of events absolutely positively begins with PEOPLE ILLEGALLY FEEDING WILDLIFE. This is the first problem that absolutely must be addressed.
When a new food supply becomes available to a population, that population grows with the food available to sustain the number. Coyotes are smart. They are utilizing the food people are offering or leaving for them. Their population has increased. This is well above what the normal balance of coyotes would be in an ecosystem like Griffith Park where the typical food sources for coyotes are rabbits and small mammals mainly. So – BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE ILLEGALLY FEEDING THE ANIMALS, there is now an overpopulation.
The symptoms of the illegal feed and and resulting change in animal behavior and population are being seen big-time right now: Coyotes are approaching people and biting people, which is, as was pointed out, normal coyote behavior when they want to be fed. They put their mouths on the food-giver.
This is the crux of the problem.
As for how state and federal agencies respond to the problem, that is a
second point where you can focus, and this seems to be where you are indeed focused. What is policy? Is current policy utilizing best practices and are they utilizing humane practices?
But as I said, a lot of actions and policies were involved, and many agencies were involved in this incident, and Rec and Parks pretty much had little to nothing to do with it.
I hope this helps in parsing the incident and showing where to address specific things if you want to have any real effect or influence.
Does this make sense?
Donna Barstow
OOh, you’re making me do more homework, Kristin! Here is the County Health Dept page that says that animal bites must be reported: http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/vet/disintro.htm
However, as I read it, you have to report the bites TO the County.
And Dr. Ehnert said above that the County reports it to Animal Services.
I can’t find any law that says an animal bite should be reported to Fish & Game. If someone else has a link, I’ll include it.
Donna Barstow
@Kristin, your second comment:
First, thanks for all the work writing this.
I agree, they should have reported it to the Rangers first thing. However, as one city person told me…the first person likely WAS a city employee. Maybe a ranger himself? I hope not. In any case, they didn’t.
Do you have a link that says the County reports to F&G? Because as I said, Dr. Ehnert says they don’t.
I agree the feeding is unacceptable. But I don’t see much diff between that and leaving all your garbage around for them to root through. In both cases, people have to stop. Fines would be a good solution to both.
Kristin Sabo
Got it on insider info that the person bit was not an employee of the Department of Recreation and Parks. And it sure as hell wasn’t a Park Ranger, Donna. Seriously. Can you imagine how fast any Ranger sleeping on the job IN A PARK would be reported? Hell, OPS would report ’em just to be *ssholes, quite honestly. So no way, jose. No one is that dumb. Wasn’t a RAP employee, and it sure as hell wasn’t a Ranger.
Could have been from some other department, or more likely just someone taking a nap in the park. I see guys doing this all the time, both in an innocent manner and those who are looking to indulge in lewd conduct and are waiting for the right lover boy to come along (creeps). I’m in the park 800 hours a year, often more. I see alot.
Mostly, its just dudes taking naps during their lunch hour or break. Women would never feel safe enough to just take a nap out in the open somewhere, but lots of guys do. I’ve even seen LAPD and CHP on breaks getting a quick catnap. The park is a nice place to be 99% of the time. :-)
OK, on the County deal, Animal Services probably files a report to Fish and Game. MDs must report animal bites to the county health department. pretty sure I said that. I think Fish and Game is the lead state agency on these issues from the wildlife end of things – while LA Co Health is the lead agency for the health/disease end of things. Fish and Game is going to get the report and make a decision, or somebody is going to be in big big trouble. The agency not required to be told is Rec and Parks quite honestly. A courtesy notification would eventually be made (one would hope!), and that is what happened here.
I like giving you work to do. You’re an excellent researcher!
Fines are good. Enforcement is needed, as is education. You and I both know the state of funding for the department tasked with both – basically non-existent. So this is going to be hard to make changes, but I’m hearing Rec and Parks is going to do it. They have to. We all agree on that.
Officer Randall
How about I tell you exactly what happened. 2 men bitten by a coyote nearly 3 weeks apart in the exact same area and in the exact same manner. The 1st victim never spoke to the Wildlife Division directly and only spoke with the Health Department. The 2nd victim did call and had the exact same bite as the 1st victim. Protocol requires reporting bites from wildlife to be reported to LA County Veterinary Health Services and when it is a Bear, Bobcat, Coyote, Mountain lion, Wolf and some other large exotic wild animal that must also be reported to Fish and Game. When a coyote bites a human that is an automatic response from Wildlife Services, a division if USDA to become involved. The death of any coyotes which the actual number in this case being 8 in total was a result of humans feeding them and disregarding posted notices to not feed wildlife. I do not want coyotes killed and chase them off or use a paint ball gun for tough case coyotes to frighten them off and had done so in this location in the past. Sadly, the feeding here was so heavy I was not able to make a long lasting impression on the coyotes there. So we humans have only ourselves to blame when wildlife dies in this manner. People always say to me “What if this had been a toddler” well it could have been and yes at that point people would most likely say 8 is not enough. It should be NONE! but a fed coyote is often a dead coyote as horrible as that may sound. I hope people reading this will not feed the wildlife in the park as the feeders will only have themselves to blame if wildlife dies as a result. If you love wildlife let them be wild, Scare them to keep them away from those who may harm them which also protects people.
I will not say please don’t feed the wildlife, I will say Do Not Feed the Wildlife as you can be fined $500.00 to $1,000.00 dollars, be arrested and spend 6 months in jail. That is violation of L.A.M.C. 53.06.5 Feeding of Non-Domesticated Predators Prohibited.
Thank you,
Officer Gregory Randall, Wildlife Specialist for the City of Los Angeles Animal Services.
To learn more, visit the Fish and Game “Keep Me Wild” site at http://www.dfg.ca.gov/keepmewild and the Los Angeles Animal Service site at: http://www.laanimalservices.com/aboutani_wildlife.htm
Donna Barstow
Officer Randall, what would the city of LA do without you? Your attention and care and knowledge are invaluable to the city.
I didn’t know you actually use paintballs – very creative, effective, and I salute you. And thank you for info on the fine.
However: There were 9 coyotes killed, not 8, which F&G & USDA told me directly, in this post. And at least 7 of those dogs did nothing.
I hope there are more effective measures after paint balls than to randomly start shooting animals. (I know that you yourself would never suggest doing this.) Let me ask you, or ask the city: has anyone ever BEEN fined for feeding the animals? Even cited? I know the Rangers can only cite, unfortunately – I don’t know why their hands are tied, as this certainly makes the park less safe. I don’t know if those other safety people, forget their name, can do anything more.
Kristin Sabo
Hi Greg,
I hope I was pretty clear with where the source of the problem lies, too.
A short story – a “park acquaintance” of mine called me yesterday asking about the coyotes and relating how one comes up to his car all the time in Griffith to be fed. He then told me that =>>he feeds them<<= and I gave him a 30 minute ear-full. I thought my friends had more sense than that.
Looks like we all have a lot of educating to do.
Donna, Park Rangers cannot use guns – any guns – by Rec and Parks department policy. (They are certified if they are peace officers, but the department has a policy otherwise). That is why they cannot use paintball guns. Animal Services, and professionals like Greg Randall, handle these things.
Office of Public Safety is the other agency, and unless their officers are ex-park rangers or are specifically assigned to LA Zoo security, they pretty much know ZERO about wild animals. They receive peace officer training and that is just about all.
That said, OPS should absolutely be citing for illegally feeding wildlife. However, OPS's record with citing for what are considered lesser crimes is pretty poor, unfortunately. That is a whole other parks issue in and unto itself.
Donna Barstow
Kristin, I know. I was just asking whether anyone had ever been fined, not whether they had a gun (pointed at or on) them.
Also, does anyone know anything about the first man? Was he homeless?
Los Angeles lofts
This is just a tragic story all around. We need to be careful in the park, it is a nature community.
Brian
They should have been killed. Cry me a river! These animals are a nusense. They devistate whole farms of their livestock and living, and there fur make a great warm throw blanket!
Joe Morgan
No they should not been killed simply a stupid act , leave them yotes alone !
Eve A
this was published a long time ago and it’s still a very informative article. I hike at Griffith park with my dog 3x a week. Sometimes we see whole packs of coyotes as the sun sets. They give us great joy. So cool you got to see their dens, I often wonder where they sleep.
Right now the City of Carson is considering setting traps to reduce it’s coyote population, particularly around a mobile home park where the residents leave out pet food and don’t secure trash bins. I think killing is the lazy and irresponsible choice. To me, it’s not a choice. This is an article on the topic:http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_21106129?fb_comment_id=fbc_10151060866516911_22519560_10151062974166911#f28abcb4c8e969
This is a facebook page to take action against traps & for prevention and education. http://www.facebook.com/events/373159032754500/
I hope the author, Donna, can share this information with anyone who can help in the effort to stop trapping.