Responding to pressure from residents concerned about the safety of pets and children, Torrance aims to implement a coyote culling program by fall of 2019 after conducting a state-mandated environmental analysis.
A newly hired part-time civilian employee – currently the Police Department has main oversight of the city’s urban coyote management plan – will be hired at a cost of $91,500 a year to oversee the five-month trapping program that would be scheduled between October and March.
The Torrance City Council voted to adopt an enhanced coyote management plan first established two years ago on a 4-3 vote with council members Tim Goodrich, George Chen and Aurelio Mattucci dissenting. The marathon meeting included an almost five-hour discussion of the plan, mostly in the form of public input, that concluded at about 1:45 a.m. Wednesday.
The council chambers were packed for the second debate on the issue within the last two months with culling proponents wearing red “Evict Coyotes” T-shirts again and opponents organized by an animal rights group.
Some residents wanted the city to respond even more aggressively to the problem – Mattucci, for example, favored year-round trapping – but many were thankful municipal officials had finally taken action on an issue batted around for years.
“If I hear one more person tell me that we need to stop feeding the coyotes and learn to co-exist and need to supervise our pets, I am going to scream!” wrote Marsha Bannon on a Facebook page Wednesday devoted to the issue in Torrance. “Forget enjoying your yard unless you are watching your pet at all times!”
“Torrance is a very dense area and a sump is not a suitable environment for wild predators,” she added.
The city’s network of sumps – fenced off and closed to the public – provide habitat for coyotes and other wildlife in addition to Madrona Marsh, parks and industrial areas.
Torrance initially adopted a coyote management plan in 2016.
That included provisions for lethal removal of problem coyotes, but it was rarely used.
A 2017 USC study lauded the effectiveness of the plan and municipal officials said coyote sightings and pet deaths had declined significantly. But skeptical residents were unconvinced of the accuracy of the city’s counts for sightings and, spurred by continuing anecdotal reports of pet killings, urged the council to adopt tougher measures.
That skepticism was given a basis in fact in September when municipal officials admitted they had trapped and euthanized just one coyote in the last two years and pledged to do more.
The council did just that last night, adopting most of the recommendations contained in a new USC study including the hiring of a civilian program administrator.
Residents claimed success.
“We didn’t get everything we wanted, but it’s a start,” Ruth Mazur Hart said on the Facebook page devoted to tracking South Bay Coyote Activity, as it is called. “Clearly, City Council paid attention to us and our rational arguments.”
Councilman Mike Griffiths argued it was “bureaucratically insane” to spend $75,000 on an environmental analysis before implementing what he believed was a more effective plan.
“It’s ridiculous we have to do this California Environmental Quality Act review,” he said. “We didn’t do a CEQA review before the coyotes got here, why should we do one after?”
Nevertheless Griffiths supported a motion made by Councilman Geoff Rizzo to adopt the new components of the plan to try and manage the coyote population.
“What we’re trying to do is achieve a reasonable balance between competing interests with public safety being the number one priority” said Rizzo, a former Torrance cop. “We can manage the population to a state so that we can deal with specific incidents and offending coyotes.”
City officials estimated a year-round trapping program could cost as much as $100,000 a year, but it’s unclear how an abbreviated five-month trapping program would cost.
