NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — Jefferson Parish residents asked officials to protect their pets from coyotes wandering into their neighborhoods in late July. Now New Orleans neighbors want the same done after sightings in the Lakeview area.
“Now they’re coyotes roaming about our nearby neighborhood street and nobody is doing anything about it,” says Lakeview resident Kristen Sagona.
Residents in Lakeview say they are being terrorized. Video footage from Sagona shows the last moments before a coyote killed her cat. She says it’s one of the two latest pet killings in the neighborhood.
“She had a heated box. She was nurtured and had all her shots. I walked out of my house and had to take a second to process what I was looking at. It was just dismembered pieces,” says Sagona.
Sagona says videos show coyotes in the street and in yards at all times of the night. She just wants the city to step up its attempts to make the community safer.
“Orleans Parish stance from what I believe is that coyotes are part of our landscape now. A residential neighborhood with families and pets and children and babies is not the landscape for coyotes,” says Sagona.
However, Xceptional Wildlife Removal says getting rid of the coyotes is not attainable as coyotes are becoming more common in urban environments. However, there is a way to prevent them from coming in certain areas.
“If you are feeding animals outside pick that food up at night cause that’s going to entice other wild animals and things like that to come around. If we can control that stuff as a population, they are not going to want to be around as much,” says Xceptional Wildlife Removal employee Jeremy Borgardt.
The average cost for a trapper ranges from $400 to $600, which Sagona believes the city should be paying for as a safety measure.
“Jefferson Parish allocated forty thousand dollars toward coyote population control. Orleans Parish has not, and I don’t believe they are trapping right now,” says Sagona.
Residents are encouraged to keep their pets indoors to ensure their safety, though Sagona hopes the city steps up to the plate on this issue.
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