Coyotes Feast on 15 Carlson Park Cats

Culver City's ongoing problem with coyotes leaped to new heights on Tuesday, when three more cats were killed by the wild mongreals.

The coyote situation is really out of control. Last night there were three more cats killed by coyotes: One on Keystone. one on Revere and one on Madison.

That makes at least 15 cats in the past eight weeks devoured in Carlson Park.

The Culver City Police Department wants to help. It is asking for volunteers to join its Wildlife Watch Program.

The first meeting will be July 11 at 7:00 p.m. at the Culver City Police Department's headquarters, 4040 Duquesne Ave.

The Mission of Wildlife Watch is to establish a comprehensive, integrated management strategy for minimizing human-wildlife conflicts and improving the quality of life in urban settings. The approach applies conservation and ecological principles, agency and community leadership coaching and respect for wildlife and one another.

Wildlife Watch is a multi-agency partnership program that provides support and training to local governments and community groups to help them design and implement their own nuisance wildlife action plans.

The program is intended to reduce human-wildlife conflicts in California's urban environments by empowering local governments and community groups to proactively address, prevent and manage nuisance wildlife issues in their own neighborhoods.

The plan is modeled after the successful Neighborhood Watch program. In the Wildlife Watch Program, residents join forces with their city and county governments to identify and eliminate wildlife attractants--food, trash, hiding places and the like--to keep wildl animals where they belong.

The program is sponsored by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) but is ultimately run and maintained by a network of committed agencies, community groups and individuals who have completed the Wildlife Watch training. The goal is to empower local governments and community groups to take responsibility to reduce human-wildlife conflicts in their own neighborhoods.