California Governor, Jerry Brown:
ban gas chambers used to kill coyotes!
According to an article published in 'LA Times', the city council of Seal Beach in California, had decided that trapping and gassing coyotes in mobile gas chambers was good enough until a public backlash caused them to abandon this misguided plan. But there are no laws to actually prevent it.
For the record: In the Dec. 18 California section, an article about urban coyotes said that the city of Seal Beach was drafting a regional coyote management plan with help from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. It is drafting the plan in cooperation with the Humane Society of the United States.
Below, the article published in 'LA Times':
The city was particularly concerned about safety in the local retirement community of Leisure World, where coyotes have ambushed dogs during the day.
In September, for example, Jovanka Radivojevic, 78, spotted a coyote staring through her living room window. When she stepped outside, she said, the predator grabbed her Shih-poo, Sugar, by the head and ran off — with the retired doctor and neighbors giving chase. Eventually the coyote dropped a slightly injured Sugar and walked away.
Critter Busters pest control has captured four coyotes in Seal Beach since September and asphyxiated them. It is a cheaper method than lethal injection, which must be administered by a licensed veterinarian.
Tens of thousands of coyotes are killed each year across the country using a variety of methods.
Livestock protection collars, which are strapped to the necks of sheep or goats, ooze deadly sodium fluoroacetate when punctured by a coyote. Also popular are M-44 "coyote getters" — devices that lure the animals close with bait, then fire sodium cyanide into their throats.
Exposure to those poisons results in cardiac arrest after as little as three minutes or as long as 10 hours, marked by severe convulsions.
To ranchers and others who see the damage coyotes inflict on livestock, concern over humane killing methods is as misguided as it would be over the killing of rats, roaches and other pests.
Eradication methods are not intentionally inhumane, they say. Rather, they are designed to be cost-efficient and effective.
The agency kills more than 75,000 coyotes a year in the United States with steel-jawed traps, wire snares and poisons that "are cruel and pose a danger to both people and their pets," the suit said.
In Seal Beach, the backlash against asphyxiation was so strong that the city reversed course. It did not renew its contract with Critter Busters and abandoned extermination as a solution. Officials now are trying to find a way to live alongside the coyotes.
Seal Beach is drafting a regional coyote management plan in cooperation with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and nearby cities including Cypress, Los Alamitos, Garden Grove and Long Beach. The goal is co-existence, enforcement of laws prohibiting the feeding of wildlife and development of a system for determining the proper response to encounters with coyotes.
The responses range from hazing to elimination of a coyote involved in documented attacks on humans, officials said.
The city of Calabasas adopted a coexistence plan in 2012 with assistance from Project Coyote that recommends the use of "hazing" techniques — shouting, loud whistles and bright lights that scare coyotes away from neighborhood streets.
But hazing, some say, has limits.
Its effectiveness, said Robert M. Timm, a former UC wildlife specialist who collaborated on a study that documented 128 coyote attacks on humans between 1977 and 2013, "depends on the naivete of the coyote." (A 1981 attack on a 3-year-old Glendale girl is the only documented case in the country of a coyote killing a person.)
Seal Beach's plan for managing coyotes reserves the right to trap and kill problem animals. And some residents say that if threatened, they will take matters into their own hands. [1]
Below, the article published in 'LA Times':
The city was particularly concerned about safety in the local retirement community of Leisure World, where coyotes have ambushed dogs during the day.
In September, for example, Jovanka Radivojevic, 78, spotted a coyote staring through her living room window. When she stepped outside, she said, the predator grabbed her Shih-poo, Sugar, by the head and ran off — with the retired doctor and neighbors giving chase. Eventually the coyote dropped a slightly injured Sugar and walked away.
Critter Busters pest control has captured four coyotes in Seal Beach since September and asphyxiated them. It is a cheaper method than lethal injection, which must be administered by a licensed veterinarian.
Tens of thousands of coyotes are killed each year across the country using a variety of methods.
Livestock protection collars, which are strapped to the necks of sheep or goats, ooze deadly sodium fluoroacetate when punctured by a coyote. Also popular are M-44 "coyote getters" — devices that lure the animals close with bait, then fire sodium cyanide into their throats.
Exposure to those poisons results in cardiac arrest after as little as three minutes or as long as 10 hours, marked by severe convulsions.
To ranchers and others who see the damage coyotes inflict on livestock, concern over humane killing methods is as misguided as it would be over the killing of rats, roaches and other pests.
Eradication methods are not intentionally inhumane, they say. Rather, they are designed to be cost-efficient and effective.
The agency kills more than 75,000 coyotes a year in the United States with steel-jawed traps, wire snares and poisons that "are cruel and pose a danger to both people and their pets," the suit said.
In Seal Beach, the backlash against asphyxiation was so strong that the city reversed course. It did not renew its contract with Critter Busters and abandoned extermination as a solution. Officials now are trying to find a way to live alongside the coyotes.
Seal Beach is drafting a regional coyote management plan in cooperation with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and nearby cities including Cypress, Los Alamitos, Garden Grove and Long Beach. The goal is co-existence, enforcement of laws prohibiting the feeding of wildlife and development of a system for determining the proper response to encounters with coyotes.
The responses range from hazing to elimination of a coyote involved in documented attacks on humans, officials said.
The city of Calabasas adopted a coexistence plan in 2012 with assistance from Project Coyote that recommends the use of "hazing" techniques — shouting, loud whistles and bright lights that scare coyotes away from neighborhood streets.
But hazing, some say, has limits.
Its effectiveness, said Robert M. Timm, a former UC wildlife specialist who collaborated on a study that documented 128 coyote attacks on humans between 1977 and 2013, "depends on the naivete of the coyote." (A 1981 attack on a 3-year-old Glendale girl is the only documented case in the country of a coyote killing a person.)
Seal Beach's plan for managing coyotes reserves the right to trap and kill problem animals. And some residents say that if threatened, they will take matters into their own hands. [1]
Death in a gas chamber
The practice of gassing involves putting animals into a small room and unleashing deadly carbon monoxide gas, which eventually suffocates them. The elderly and pregnant animals may take several sessions before they die.
We have no data on how long it takes for a coyote to die in a gas chamber, but we assume that the duration is similar to the one of dogs being killed in this utterly cruel and inhumane way.
As you can imagine, gassed animals claw, cough, fight with one another, choke and struggle. In dogs, it has been observed that it sometimes takes 1/2 hour or more until they become unconscious.
There have been reports of dogs becoming extremely unsettled and crying during this process. Most choke to death on their own vomit. Some slip in a coma and are buried alive.
It can take up to 40 minutes for a dog or cat to die in a gas chamber, whereas an injection causes loss of consciousness within 3 to 5 seconds and clinical death within 2 to 5 minutes. The most widely-accepted method of euthanasia in the United States is the injection of sodium pentobarbital — a substance that can quickly and painlessly end an animal's life.
With this information in mind, there is simply no reason the gas chamber practice should be allowed to continue for any animal!
Ban the use of gas chambers to kill coyotes!
Even though the practice of using gas chambers for dogs and cats has been outlawed in California, (and many other US-states), California city council of Seal Beach had decided that trapping and gassing coyotes in this inhumane way was good enough and it was only because the backlash against asphyxiation was so strong that the city of Seal Beach reversed course and abandoned extermination as a solution.
But there are no laws to actually prevent it!
There are non-lethal and humane ways to co-exist with wildlife. To be trapped and forced into a gas chambers to choke to death is beyond inhumane. Please sign the following petition [2] (not an OFA-petition) demanding that California Governor Jerry Brown makes this practice illegal and bans gas chambers used to kill coyotes.
Please click on the big button below to be redirected to the petition site to sign.
Thank you very much, in advance.
But there are no laws to actually prevent it!
There are non-lethal and humane ways to co-exist with wildlife. To be trapped and forced into a gas chambers to choke to death is beyond inhumane. Please sign the following petition [2] (not an OFA-petition) demanding that California Governor Jerry Brown makes this practice illegal and bans gas chambers used to kill coyotes.
Please click on the big button below to be redirected to the petition site to sign.
Thank you very much, in advance.
References
1) http://www.latimes.com/science/la-me-coyotes-20141218-story.html
2) http://www.thepetitionsite.com/277/538/048/ban-gas-chambers-for-coyotes-in-california/?taf_id=13315829&cid=fb_na
1) http://www.latimes.com/science/la-me-coyotes-20141218-story.html
2) http://www.thepetitionsite.com/277/538/048/ban-gas-chambers-for-coyotes-in-california/?taf_id=13315829&cid=fb_na