Some people want Seal Beach coyotes relocated, others want them sterilized, still others want them to be killed. City officials recommend hazing them. The Seal Beach Police Department gives away cowbells to make noises at the animals. They’re available at police headquarters. Some citizens question the effectiveness of hazing them.
Legally, the options are limited.
Coyotes can’t be relocated in California.
“It is unlawful to relocate any trapped furbearing or nongame mammal,” according to California Code Of Regulations, Title 14, Sec. 465.5.
“All furbearing and nongame mammals that are legal to trap must be immediately killed or released. Unless released, trapped animals shall be killed by shooting where local ordinances, landowners, and safety permit,” according to Code of Regulations 465.5.
That would apparently also prohibit sterilizing coyotes.
Seal Beach resident Paulette Smith called for coyotes to be trapped and killed in a recent email interview. Describing herself as an animal lover, Smith was upset about social media posts she reported seeing on Nextdoor about cats being killed by coyotes.
(The Sun searched for coyotes and cats on Nextdoor and found posts from a variety of communities and discussions about coyotes attacking dogs and cats. That only proves that one person did not find the same posts Smith saw. Some of the posts the Sun found included lively debates about whether the coyotes were the problems or human beings were the problem. Some of the posts were from areas far outside of Seal Beach.)
The Seal Beach Police Department, which is in charge of the local animal control program, has specifically and repeatedly questioned the reliability of the Nextdoor platform as a source of facts. The SBPD has advised the public not to rely on Nextdoor as a source of information.
The city government received two reports of coyote activity during the first half of 2026, three reports in calendar year 2025, and no reliable count in 2024, according to a recent response to a Public Records Act Request.
“These coyotes have no fear of humans,” Smith wrote in an Aug. 17 email.
“My opinion is the city should start trapping and euthanizing every one they can trap,” Smith wrote. (See history below.)
“I know people say that the coyotes will just produce more babies to keep the population the same. I don’t seem to believe that,” Smith wrote.
“If they keep it up long enough, I believe it would have to eventually cut the population regardless of what the current data says about how they just produce more,” Smith wrote.
Dr. Ted Stankowich, associate chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at California State University Long Beach, argued against random coyote killing in an Aug. 18 email.
“Euthanizing coyotes simply as a means to reduce numbers has been shown to be ineffective at controlling the population and even counterproductive,” wrote Stankowich.
“Because coyotes maintain stable social groups and territories, when you remove individuals, it destabilizes these packs and allows new groups to move. When these new individuals find now-unclaimed ground, it can stimulate even more rapid reproductive rates, which increases the local population size,” Stankowich wrote.
“Euthanasia should only be used to remove ‘problem’ individuals that are no longer fearful of humans to the extent that they approach them and become aggressive. These individuals are on the most extreme end of the bold/aggressive scale and by removing them, you remove their ability to pass on these genes and impose some artificial selection on the population for more fearful individuals, which is the natural state for coyotes with regards to humans,” Stankowich wrote.
State law allows unlimited year-round hunting of coyotes by licensed hunters. However, hunting and firing guns is generally not allowed within most city limits. In 2009, the Seal Beach Police opposed issuing permits to shoot at rabbits with pellet guns in Leisure World.
Seal Beach briefly tried random trapping and euthanasia of coyotes in 2014. According to the minutes of the Oct. 13, 2014 City Council meeting, 14 individuals opposed the trapping and killing of coyotes in Seal Beach.
One council member opposed the use of carbon-dioxide gas to euthanize the coyotes.
Ultimately, the coyote trapping program ended.
In March 2015, Seal Beach adapted the original Coyote Management Plan. The plan recommends hazing with “lethal removal” limited to narrow circumstances.
The Coyote Plan was last updated in 2025.