Community Corner

Heated Discussion Continues in Lake Forest Park Over Coyotes

Council asks Environmental Quality Commission and Community Services Commission to study coyote issue and laws on feeding wildlife elsewhere and report back in 90 days

Lake Forest Park residents packed City Hall Thursday night to speak out about what should be done with neighborhood coyotes and hear from representatives from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services Division.

“There’s not an urban area in the state that does not have coyotes, “ Kim Chandler of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Mill Creek office said. “You may not see them—they’re primarily nocturnal but you will see them during the day. “

Matt Stevens, a wildlife biologist for the USDA's Wildlife Services Division, who shot three coyotes recently, said during his testimony before the City Council: “These aren’t coyote problems these are people problems. I will agree with probably most of the people that are going to comment here today that these coyotes should not be killed. I agree with that fully. These coyotes have lost their fear completely of humans. Specifically in this neighborhood on 28th Ave. N.E.”

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For its part, the City Council voted unanimously to have the city’s Environmental Quality Commission and Community Services Commission study the coyote issue, including laws in other communities regarding feeding of wildlife and jurisdictional issues. They will report back to the Council in 90 days.

Marian Burns has lived on 28th Ave. N.E. for 25 years. It's the neighborhood where Stevens shot three coyotes after they killed a ram a week and a half ago. Burns said she felt the coyotes had gotten too brazen.

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“It needed to be done,” Burns said. “It’s gotten way out of hand.”

Burns said she was out in her backyard on July 16 with her 20-month-old grandson and watched as several young coyote pups paced back and forth at the back of the yard of the brush with their mother next to them.

“In the last six to eight months their behavior has changed drastically and they’ve been getting more aggressive more visible during the day. They’re just getting too close,” Burns said.

“I’m sad about the coyotes but there’s something going on with them they’re not right, right now,” she said.

Lisa Wathne, a Lake Forest Park resident, who works for the Humane Society of the United States, said killing coyotes will not solve the problem, and will instead make it worse.

“The killing of these coyotes by federal agents has angered a lot of people, myself included, because frankly we expect better from our city, Lake Forest Park,” she said. “Across the country as humans encroach on coyote habitat all communities are experiencing more conflict with these animals but there are many communities who have chose to deal with this in progressive and humane ways.”

Chandler said other means of dealing with problem coyotes such as traps and tranquilizers have proven to be ineffective.

“They’re smart,” he said of the coyotes. “These urban coyotes have learned that two –legged folks are they’re meal ticket intentionally or unintentionally.”

Stevens and residents of the 28th Ave. N.E. neighborhood said they’ve seen evidence that someone has been leaving dog food out or feeding the coyotes.

Fish and Wildlife’s enforcement division has tried for the past three years, unsuccessfully, to get a state law passed that would make it a crime to feed wildlife, “in particular dangerous wildlife, like cougars, bears and coyotes,” Chandler said.

British Columbia and Montana have laws that ban feeding wildlife, he said.

“It’s a good law,” he said. “Fed wildlife is dead wildlife.”

Stevens said, in regard to local ordinances regarding feeding of coyotes: “Whether or not the ordinance is there people have to choose to follow it and they have to enforce it.”

Stevens, who is based in Snohomish County, said he gets two to three calls a day about coyotes in western Washington: coyotes walking up to golf carts, snatching cats and other incidents.

“This isn’t unique to Lake Forest Park," Stevens said. "I receive two to three calls a day this time of year, about coyotes in urban settings."

James Mead, a Lake Forest Park Stewardship Foundation member, who lives near Grace Cole Park, said he was upset with the “Wild West mentality” of calling in federal agents to shoot coyotes, calling Stevens a “hired gun.”

“I feel bad that the sheep died but I really can’t blame the coyotes that were seen feeding off the carcass,” he said. “They were simply doing what comes naturally to coyotes to survive. They scavengers, omnivores, opportunists par excellence.”

Stevens said whether to shoot a coyote is “a subjective call on our part, from our experience.”

He canvasses neighborhoods looking at the evidence there and the habitat before talking to the people in the neighborhood.

“We learn a lot from the people that are adamantly against what we do and we learn a lot from people that are glad that we’re there because they feel unsafe and there’s a lot of in-between,” he said. “There are a lot of people who didn’t know what we were doing in there.”

Michelle LeMoine, who has served on the city’s Community Services Commission for the last seven years and lives across the street from the Gorbman residence where the sheep was killed, remained opposed to what happened.

“I consider this to be the saddest most gut-wrenching experience I have ever had,” she said. “To say the least I was shocked and horrified that this was the only solution that they could come up with,” she said. “I told them I did not agree with what they were doing.”

Eileen Dunnihoo, a long-time resident of Lake Forest Park who lives nearby, said some people including herself had been too casual about the coyotes.

“We’ve allowed the coyotes to lie our yards as they’ve wanted to so we are much of the problem,” she said. “Robert Frost once said, ‘good fences make good neighbors.’ This includes all our neighbors human and wild.”

Stevens told the Council that his agency prefers to get and get out and do a job without attracting too much attention.

 ‘This is actually the first city council meeting I’ve been to in 11 years on the job,” he said.

Most of the time, he does educational seminars with the public before a problem like this occurs. He mentioned a recent one in Puyallup where he and other biologists were able to answer people’s questions.

 “We always want to try to find the best long-term non-lethal solution,” Stevens said. “When you see a coyote scare it, do what you can, throw rocks at it. Don’t throw hot dogs at it. That’s going on unfortunately not only here in Lake Forest Park, but everywhere.”


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