SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — While the usual hustle and bustle of downtown Sacramento has slowed during the pandemic, some new faces can be seen roaming around the State Capitol and surrounding areas. A few coyotes have been spotted playing on Capitol grounds and roaming along Capitol Mall in the past couple of weeks. Michael Hare took a video of a coyote chewing on a piece of wood near one of the Capitol entrance gates.

Don’t be surprised if you catch sight of a coyote wearing a collar when you’re hiking in the Marin Headlands. Scientists from the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) recently trapped, ear-tagged, collared and released seven coyotes in the Marin Headlands for a research project.

The mission of Wildlife Services, an office in the Department of Agriculture (USDA), is “to provide federal leadership and expertise to resolve wildlife conflicts to allow people and wildlife to coexist.” In practice, that means slaughtering animals in droves. New data the USDA released this week shows that in 2019, the program killed approximately 1.2 million animals native to North America. That includes hundreds of gray wolves, black bears, and bobcats, thousands of red foxes, tens of thousands of beavers, and hundreds of thousands of birds. Fewer than 3,000 of those animals were killed unintentionally.

The National Park Service has released its management plan for Agriculture in the Point Reyes National Seashore. That is right—agriculture in a national park system unit. The decision to continue livestock production in Point Reyes National Seashore demonstrates once again why allowing any commercial resource use in our parklands compromises the primary goals of our park system—which is to manage public lands for public values, not private profit.

Thank you, Gov. Newsom, for signing California Assembly Bill 1788, making California the first state in the nation to effectively ban rodenticides found locally in black poison boxes and seen throughout our neighborhoods and cities. This hard-fought bill imposes a moratorium on the use of second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides, thereby saving the lives of thousands of mountain lions. Bobcats, owls, hawks, coyotes and other non-target species have suffered and died, victims of secondary exposure from these deadly rat poisons.

Today, wolves, coyotes and other predators are still considered public enemy number one in many ranching communities. But a growing body of research indicates that killing predators doesn’t actually help prevent attacks, and may in fact lead to increased conflicts between humans and livestock.

Marty Griffin has witnessed the transformation of the Bay Area in ways that most people would only know through old photographs and history books.

It begins with a lone canine voice, a melancholy sound as the shadows grow longer across the valley floor. Another joins, and another; a chorus of untamed canines yipping and singing. In the crepuscular stillness, from hills far away, another group responds. Back and forth the tune ricochets — the sound of the wild welcoming the night.

Mendocino County supervisors voted Tuesday to renew the county’s contract with a federal agency that aids ranchers in killing predators that prey on their livestock. The county had previously contracted with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services, which has garnered criticism from animal advocates for killing predators such as coyotes, mountain lions and bobcats instead of considering nonlethal ways of curbing attacks on local livestock.

Since 2014, Gowan Batist, co-owner and manager of Fortunate Farm in Caspar and a fifth-generation sheep rancher, has utilized non-lethal methods to protect the farm’s 40 sheep grazed regularly on approximately 120 acres of land including their own, their neighbors and Jughandle State Park. “With a large coyote population, we have had, over the years, several losses to coyotes. We didn’t want to shoot them so we went from hardscape fencing to electric mesh; we haven’t had a loss since then,” she says.

As sportsmen and conservationists, we commend the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission for considering CR-102, a proposed rule to ban wildlife killing contests statewide. Competitions involving indiscriminate killing of animals for cash and prizes – the greatest number, the largest, or even the youngest – promote irresponsible waste and devalue wildlife and their sensitive habitats. This rule will address the public’s concerns that these events are cruel, unethical and ecologically destructive, and will protect the reputation of the state’s sportsmen and women who understand that killing contests show complete disregard for life and threaten the future of Washington’s legitimate hunting traditions.