Chase Niesner in The Los Angeles Times: Inside the war against Southern California’s urban coyotes. ‘Horrific’ or misunderstood?

In Los Angeles, there is a deep division between those who want to eradicate coyotes and those who seek peaceful coexistence with the species. On one hand, people want to make property safe for people and pets, and on the other, advocates want to preserve the ecological importance of the predator. 

Chase Niesner, a Ph.D. candidate at IoES, coined the phrase “cloud coyotes” to describe the disharmony between urban dwellers and the intelligent predators that have lived here for 47,000 years.  “They are manifestations of people’s need to domesticate every square foot of space in the region,” he said, “to the level of comfort and safety they feel within their own homes.”