PETA and Angry Residents to Call On City Council to Clean Up Its Act Over Coyote Concerns

For Immediate Release:
July 13, 2023

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Outraged residents will join PETA at the Pasadena City Council meeting on Monday to urge the city to reject any proposal to violently trap and kill coyotes, a move that seems designed to appease a small group of wealthy homeowners in the Arroyo—the ancestral home and refuge of local wildlife. The group will call on the city council to take humane and fiscally responsible steps to discourage neighborhood coyote visits, including by cleaning up trash and brush in public spaces, removing food sources, and reminding residents to keep cats indoors, for their sake as well as that of the wildlife outdoor cats kill.

When:    Monday, July 17, 4:30 p.m.

Where:    Pasadena City Hall, 100 Garfield Ave., Pasadena

PETA and concerned residents will speak at the meeting, during which they will show photos of a dog who was injured in a snare trap set for coyotes as well as of trash spilling out of dumpsters and garbage cans around the city and feral cat–feeding stations, all of which attract coyotes and other wildlife. A PETA representative will also show a short video of a frantic, struggling coyote caught in a snare trap.

“The privileged few pushing to kill Pasadena’s ‘song dogs’ chose to live in a wild area and now seek to waste taxpayer money on strangling and gassing the coyotes who have long made the Arroyo their home and are entitled to do just that,” says PETA Senior Vice President Lisa Lange, a Pasadena resident. “Every study shows that killing coyotes doesn’t work, and PETA is calling on city leaders to pursue proven, humane resolutions and reject this senseless and barbaric extermination request.”

Snare traps are wire loops that wrap around an animal’s neck and slowly strangle them as they struggle. If their victim doesn’t die, they endure pain and panic until a trapper arrives to put them in a box and gas them in the back of a truck. PETA points out that nearly 70% of snare traps don’t work as intended, as these vile traps are capable of catching any animal, including dogs, whose guardians often let them run off leash in the Arroyo.

In addition to being cruel, snare traps and other lethal methods are ineffective, as the city of Torrance has discovered, since coyotes may move in from outlying areas as long as food sources remain available. To encourage coyotes to leave residential neighborhoods, PETA offers the following tips:

• Keep all garbage in tightly sealed, wildlife-proof containers—currently, trash receptacles around the Arroyo are rusting, with food scraps and trash spilling out, attracting wildlife to the area.
• Keep companion cats indoors (for the good of the cats and other wildlife as well).
• Prohibit free-feeding stations for feral cats, like those at the California Institute of Technology, and only feed companion animals indoors. Pick up fallen fruit and remove plantings, such as ivy, that attract rats and, therefore, coyotes.
• Install taller fencing and/or Coyote Rollers (aluminum tubes that spin when animals attempt to enter or exit a fenced area).
• Increase outdoor lighting.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.