Monterey, CA Animal Ordinances: Wildlife Feeding (2026)

1 prohibits any person from feeding or in any manner intentionally providing food as sustenance, or to encourage domesticity, to a non-domesticated animal, with one built-in exception: a bird feeder in the yard. That single carve-out means backyard bird feeding stays legal while feeding deer, raccoons, coyotes, geese or other wildlife directly does not. The section then lists two further circumstances where feeding wildlife is permitted. The first covers wildlife maintained, treated or fed under a valid certificate or permit issued by the State of California or a federal agency, which reaches licensed wildlife rehabilitators and similar permit holders.

The second covers the narrow window between the time Animal Control or the Humane Society has been notified about an animal and the time that agency actually picks it up, letting a resident keep an injured or stranded animal fed or cared for until help arrives without violating the section. This sits in the same article of Chapter 6 as the rooster ban and livestock spacing rules, and the chapter's animal control enforcement structure (Section 6-11's reference to the Chief of Police and the City-County joint powers animal control agency) applies here too, since feeding-related nuisance complaints are handled the same way as other animal violations under the chapter.

The rule reaches the full range of non-domesticated species found around Monterey's parks and waterfront, from deer and raccoons to gulls and geese, without listing individual species by name, which keeps enforcement from turning on identifying a specific animal.