It seems like everyone has a strong opinion about coyotes. Some people love them as a symbol of the wild deserts, yet others can’t stand them. What are the facts about these animals?

Although humans have tried everything from poisons and gases to helicopters and engineered epidemics to kill coyotes, the predator has thrived in the United States.

MONTEREY, Calif. — The California Superior Court ruled that Monterey County’s contract with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services program for killing and relocating predators native to California violates state law.

Salinas >> Last year, animal protection and conservation organizations challenged Monterey County’s contract renewal with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services program, calling it “a notorious federal wildlife-killing program” and filing a lawsuit.

Camilla H. Fox, Founder and Executive Director of Project Coyote, will present the Collegiate Peaks Forum Series Lecture “Wild Things: Coexisting with North America’s Native Carnivores” at 7 p.m. on Thursday, July 27, at the Buena Vista Community Center, 715 E. Main St. The lecture is free to the public and refreshments will be served.

The latest depredations of San Francisco’s coyote population, having deprived a family of its beloved shih tzu, revived calls to rid the city of the predators. But barring unprecedented assistance from the Acme Corp., whose products have proved particularly dangerous to the species, there is little reason or hope for evicting the wily coyote from its urban dens.

The fatal coyote attack on a small dog at the front door of a San Francisco home has prompted a raging debate on social media and in public forums about allowing wild predators to remain in the city.

Federal wildlife managers in charge of a new draft recovery plan for the endangered Mexican gray wolf received a barrage of questions during a public meeting Tuesday night that suggest the plan still has many skeptics.

Thanks to your support, Project Coyote has produced the final version of our documentary film about wildlife killing contests. I’m excited to update you on our progress and share our next steps with you.

Last week, Project Coyote partnered with four other wildlife conservation groups — the Center for Biological Diversity, Western Watersheds Project, Animal Welfare Institute, and WildEarth Guardians — in suing the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Wildlife Services program over its outdated wildlife-killing plan for Northern California.

First things first: Coyote. When you read the word, how many syllables do you hear? Your answer, according to Dan Flores, author of Coyote America, may be “immediately diagnostic of a whole range of belief systems and values.” The ki-YOH-tee versus ki-yote divide is one of the best indicators of a person’s coyote politics, a nearly hard-and-fast way that we subconsciously identify ourselves: as defenders of the species, in the case of the former, or as a manager, shooter and/or trapper, in the latter.

Over a chilly weekend earlier this year in Pennsylvania, thousands of shooters participated in the Mosquito Creek Coyote Hunt, a “killing contest.” Now in its 26th year, this year’s event offered $46,000 in prize money ($10 entry fee multiplied by 4,660 entrants) for the “right” to take a coyote life. This is one of more than 20 staged assaults against coyotes in Pennsylvania. Nationwide, there are many sponsored slaughters throughout the year that, without reason, wipe out wildlife.

Dave Parsons, 69, former Mexican Wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — Parsons oversaw the release of 11 Mexican wolves from three different packs into the wild of Arizona’s Apache Forest while working for the USFWS. “I’ve spent 17 years years since my retirement trying to protect the Mexican wolves’ right to exist,” he says. “There are many people who want it to go extinct, but I’m still devoting my life to it.”