Kaveh Okoro
Jul 1, 2026, 11:23 PM
Brought this up at our Woodbury East HOA meeting last night and figured I'd share since it applies to a lot of us near Jeffrey Open Space. Two of the trash enclosures on our loop had lids that don't fully latch, and one had a bag left outside the bin all weekend. That's basically a standing dinner invite. Coyotes aren't the problem there, the buffet is. The board agreed to get the two latches fixed and I asked them to add a line in the next newsletter about not leaving trash out the night before pickup and picking up fallen fruit from the yards backing the greenbelt. Small stuff, but it's the difference between animals passing through and animals hanging around. If your enclosure gate is broken, put in a ticket through Access Irvine so there's a record. Landscaping also runs sprinklers around 5am along the path, which is prime coyote hour, so keep dogs leashed on those early walks and just give them room to move off. They've got a den somewhere back in the open space and they're not going anywhere, so the enclosures are really the piece we control.
Claire Ahmed
Jul 1, 2026, 11:23 PM
Bommer at dawn is prime time for exactly that kind of encounter, so nice work staying calm and big. I'm off Shady Canyon and the thing that finally moved the needle on my street was making it boring, not loud: we did a group text, everyone pulled cat food off porches, and I switched to a locking trash bin after one got tipped twice. The scraps problem is real. One neighbor "feeding the cute one" undoes a whole block. Would happily swap notes if you start a thread.
Jennifer Cruz
Jul 1, 2026, 11:38 PM
This is the good kind of HOA energy honestly. The latch thing is so real, half the enclosures on our side never fully close and people just assume the lid did its job.
James Adeyemi
Jul 2, 2026, 1:07 AM
Curious what the fix looks like on those latches. Is it a whole gate replacement or just the catch? Trying to figure out how hard a lift it'll be to get ours done.
Valentina Brown
Jul 2, 2026, 2:32 AM
Thank you for actually bringing it to the board instead of just venting online. The 5am sprinkler + dog walk overlap is the part that gets me, I didn't even connect those two until you laid it out.
Marcus White
Jul 2, 2026, 3:56 AM
Fixing latches is fine but let's be honest, that's treating the symptom. If there's a den back in the open space you can fasten every lid on Jeffrey and still have coyotes on the greenbelt at dawn. At some point the city has to actually deal with the den, not just remind us about our trash.
Mariana Jung
Jul 2, 2026, 5:27 AM
Kaveh, when you say fallen fruit does that include the community citrus trees near the guest lot? Those drop like crazy this time of year and nobody picks them up.
Danielle Hernandez
Jul 2, 2026, 6:52 AM
We did the same thing in our Dana Point tract last year, put a line in the newsletter about no trash out the night before. Didn't magically fix everything but the coyotes definitely stopped treating the cul-de-sac like a drive-thru. Worth doing.
Marcus White
Jul 2, 2026, 8:20 AM
Glad it helped in your tract but a coyote passing through less often isn't the same as it not being there. My worry is people read a newsletter blurb and think the problem's solved, then walk a small dog off leash at dusk because hey, we fixed the trash.
Leila Kang
Jul 2, 2026, 9:48 AM
I don't think anyone's saying latches solve everything though. It's just the one piece the HOA actually controls. You can't relocate a den on a whim, that's a state wildlife call, but you can absolutely stop leaving a bag of garbage out. Both things can be true.
Diego Salcedo
Jul 2, 2026, 11:16 AM
For the broken gate reports, is that under Access Irvine or does it go straight to the HOA management company? Ours is Keystone and I never know which channel actually gets it fixed vs just logged.
Nathan Wang
Jul 2, 2026, 12:38 PM
Report it wherever, but I'll say what I always say on these threads: reporting a broken gate is not the same as reporting the animal. If a coyote is following people on that path near the den, that goes to Coyote Cacher AND Irvine Animal Services so there's an actual record of behavior, not just infrastructure. That's the paper trail that gets anything done.
James Adeyemi
Jul 2, 2026, 2:08 PM
Fair point on the two separate reports. I didn't realize Coyote Cacher and the animal services line were tracking different things. Kind of makes sense to log both.
Leila Kang
Jul 2, 2026, 3:35 PM
Tried the no-trash-out-the-night-before thing on our street after reading this and reminded a couple neighbors too. Small sample size but the enclosure area's already less picked-through by morning. Thanks for the nudge, Kaveh.
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