Isle of Palms, a city and barrier island in South Carolina, has unleashed a war on its coyotes—asking residents to report coyote sightings so officials can set traps and kill them.

Friends of Animals is adamant that the Isle of Palms not bow down to pressure from pet owners, namely those with outdoor cats, who think coyotes should be eradicated. The Isle of Palms already has a common-sense and comprehensive guide to co-existing with coyotes on its own city website.

Please contact the mayor and members of City Council of Isle of Palms and ask them to stop killing and trapping coyotes and to reinforce its own advice about living with coyotes, which includes keeping all cats indoors (the only way to ensure safety). Lethal measures like this are not only inhumane, but ineffective. The coyote’s famous howl allows it to take censuses of surrounding coyote populations and adjust the their litters accordingly. In other words, killing some coyotes will trigger larger litters of pups and colonization behavior among the survivors.

Contact Mayor Jimmy Carol at (843) 452-1200 or email him at jcarroll@iop.net. Visit this website and click on the names of City Council members to email them.