Wildlife Services should be renamed "Wildlife Execution Squad"

Congress passed the Animal Damage Control Act in 1931 as a branch of service under the US Department of Agriculture, with the objective of controlling animals that were a nuisance to ranchers and their livestock.

For reasons that are unclear, the agency was renamed Wildlife Services in 1997.

The mission of the Wildlife Service as stated on their web site is “To provide federal leadership and expertise to resolve wildlife conflicts and create a balance that allows humans and wildlife to coexist peacefully.”

Unfortunately, the alarming statistics of millions of birds and animals that have literally been exterminated by the service clearly indicates little in the way of managing wildlife to “peacefully coexist” with people. Rather, it indicates the free-falling and indiscriminate slaughter of any segment of wildlife that draws a complaint to the Service.

A blatant example of the Wildlife Services’ staggering complacency toward their own mission took place, when ABC news reporter Sam Donaldson engaged the Service to kill animals on his New Mexico sheep ranch. For a period of five years starting in 1991, agents made 412 search-and-kill visits to Donaldson’s ranch and destroyed 74 coyotes, 3 bobcats, and 2 foxes. It was estimated to cost the tax payers $100,000 for the Service to help an amateur rancher protect his sheep.

There was no “balance” or “peaceful coexistence” in sight. The incident was referred to as “Samicide” in an Earth Island Journal article published in 1997.

WildEarth Guardians is a conservation group that has set its sites on abolishing the draconian agency, which is not to be confused with the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

In February, WildEarth Guardians submitted a report entitled, “War on Wildlife” to the Obama Administration calling for the antiquated agency to be shut down. The 108 page report was the first extensive and comprehensive study on the lack of species management efficacy demonstrated by Wildlife Services done in forty years. In 2008, WS killed nearly 5 million animals, including domestic pets that got caught in traps or succumbed to secondary poisoning.

“When top carnivores such as coyotes, wolves, and mountain lions thrive, so does the balance of nature. Their presence ensures better ecosystem function, particularly in the arid West, and their presence dramatically increases the numbers of other species present,” said Wendy Keefover-Ring, Director of Carnivore Protection for WildEarth Guardains. “Americans appreciate and value knowing that wild wolves, bears, lynx and other carnivores thrive on our national forests. It’s high time to end the war on wildlife.”

According to WildEarth Guardian’s comprehensive report Wildlife Services is:

*Biologically Unsound - Wildlife Services uses a “sledgehammer approach” to wildlife management, meaning over one million animals are killed each year using non-selective killing controls such as poisons, traps, and aerial gunning. Animals killed also include threatened and endangered species, a number which has steadily increased since 2005. The number of carnivores killed has also increased since 2005, which is of particular concern to conservation biologists, since these animals play vital roles in ecosystems.

* Dangerous - Between 2002 and 2006, Wildlife Services failed several federal audits to safely inventory, store, and control access to chemical weapons, and in 2007 the agency itself admitted that it had experienced a “wake of accidents.” The aerial gunning program has killed at least 10 agents and injured 28 more. In 2008, the Environmental Protection Agency charged Wildlife Services for its illegal placement of a sodium cyanide M-44 (a highly lethal booby trap) on public land, which harmed a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist and killed his dog. Additionally, Wildlife Services puts little emphasis on using non-lethal methods, and puts few resources towards developing new, ethical non-lethal research.

* Unnecessary and Fiscally Unsound - Taxpayers are paying the bill for these activities, and Wildlife Services fails to protect the businesses it supposedly helps. The USDA National Agricultural Statistics Services shows that most livestock losses come from weather, disease, illness, and birthing problems, and not predation. Carnivores killed less than 1% of cattle (0.18%) and approximately 3% of sheep produced in the U.S.

Further more, in November, 2009, WildEarth Guardians sent a petition to the Obama administration and the Secretary of Interior, Ken Salazar in a formal request to stop the Wildlife Service’s dangerous and inhumane practice of aerial gunning.

"Our federal government and others indiscriminately kill tens of thousands of animals on public lands each year," stated Keefover-Ring. “While one federal agency spends millions of dollars to restore species such as wolves, another spends millions to slaughter them. We have asked the Obama administration to end the war on our wildlife by stopping aerial gunning and poisoning on federal lands.”

The conservation group reported: using Wildlife Services’ own numbers. Even though slightly fewer raptors (eagles, hawks, owls, and vultures) were killed in 2008, more than 2,000 mammalian carnivores (badgers; house cats; foxes; mountain lions; river otters, raccoons; ringtails; skunks; and gray wolves) were killed by the agency than in 2007.

In addition, the records show that of the five million species killed in 2008, it also including 1.6 million cowbirds, 1.5 million starlings, and 880,752 blackbirds.

Wildlife Services, as an arm of the USDA, has done such irresponsible things as using helicopters to spray poison over wetlands in an insane effort to scuttle black bird habitat to appease the Sunflower Industry, due to the bird’s appetite for sunflower seeds.

The budget for Wildlife Services has increased dramatically, yet taking the path of least resistance, with poison, deadly traps, and bullets has been the status quo, rather than pursue non-lethal options. The increase of human-animal conflict will only continue as development encroaches into wildlife habitats.

Finding ways for animals to coexist peacefully with humans is a proposition that Wildlife Services has shown no interest in--regardless of their altruistic mission statement--and they should be stopped.

***Copyright Jean Williams 2009. Permission to reprint up to three paragraphs with a direct link back to this page for full story.