Gulfport, FL Animal Ordinances: Coyote Management (2026)

Section 17-28 of the parks chapter, titled Animals and wildlife, governs how coyotes, deer, and other wild animals are treated on city property, rather than a dedicated coyote-culling ordinance. Subsection (c) prohibits feeding, molesting, harming, frightening, killing, trapping, hunting, chasing, capturing, possessing, shooting, or throwing an object at any wildlife on city-owned land, and separately bars removing eggs, nests, or young, or collecting, buying, selling, or gifting any specimen, dead or alive. The feeding prohibition is the operative anti-habituation tool the city has for coyotes drawn into residential areas near Boca Ciega Bay: rather than authorizing hazing or culls, the code makes it a violation to feed the animals that draw complaints in the first place.

The only path around the ban is special permission from the city manager or a designee, and the code separately exempts de minimis collection, such as picking up an empty shell, from the removal prohibition. Subsection (a) of the same section bars any animal other than a domesticated dog or cat from city parks at all, reinforcing that wildlife, coyotes included, is not to be encouraged onto park grounds, while subsection (d) separately bans anyone from introducing a pet or other wildlife into a park through abandonment or negligence.

This section, adopted by Ord. No. 96-3 and amended twice since (2010 and 2017), sits in Chapter 17, Streets, Sidewalks, Parks and Parkways, not Chapter 5's animal-control provisions, so it applies specifically to city-owned land such as parks and the waterfront, not private yards.