Coyote a very adaptable animal but a taxpayer?

Durham NC. Durham residents are frustrated with coyotes roaming their neighborhood and eating their cats and no one seems willing to help.

Fearful residents have called animal control, but neither the county nor the state can help.

“We’ve got cats missing, we’ve got cats the tails are off of them, so I did call animal control,” resident Linda Rowland said. “It’s a real concern of mine that something could hurt a child.”

But the close encounters have not convinced animal control to help out.

“We do have a presence of coyotes and we’re aware of it,” said Melinda Duarte with Durham Animal Control.

Duarte says by law she can’t trap a coyote. Most animal control offices in the Triangle are only licensed to handle domesticated animals, leaving people like Rowland with only one option.

“If they are on their property and they’re in the process of attacking or attempting to attack small animals they’d be in their legal right to shoot it,” Duarte said.

Rowland was told to call the North Carolina Wildlife Commission.

“Wildlife told me I couldn’t trap it, because I wasn’t licensed,” Rowland said. “I couldn’t shoot it, because wildlife has rights we should have rights too. We’re the ones paying the taxes.”

ABC 11

Animal control cannot help because coyotes are wildlife however I believe these folks have been giving some misinformation. North Carolina does not have a closed season on coyote so any licensed hunter can kill them. Now the county and or the city may have restrictions on discharging a weapon that prevent such actions.
Wildlife like foxes and coyotes are more visible right now because chance is pretty good they have young kits they are trying to raise. Thus this time of the year it is not unusual to see them hunting during daylight hours.
Now with how rapidly the coyote population has expanded across the state if we could find a way to tax them it might be good. Then again they probably want free health care that will just cost us more.

Related Posts