COLORADO
Shooting
coyotes from the air came under fire this spring. Twenty
environmental groups sent a letter to Colorado Bureau of Land
Management Director Ann Morgan demanding a halt to aerial gunning
in the state until the agency studies its effects on
wildlife.
“Aerial gunning needs to stop because
of the biological impact and the cost to taxpayers,” says Wendy
Keefover-Ring of Sinapu, a Boulder-based conservation
group.
Keefover-Ring said costs skyrocket because
of plane and helicopter crashes. Four crashes have already occurred
in the West this year, and Sinapu says in the last 12 years, it has
documented 19 times that planes and helicopters have hit power
lines, “collided with the ground” or cracked up due to engine
failure. In that time, seven people died, and 26 were injured while
shooting coyotes.
The federal Wildlife Services
currently oversees predator control on all BLM lands (HCN, 4/27/98:
Predator control gets out of control), but Keefover-Ring wants the
BLM to take responsibility because, “it is their jurisdiction; they
are federal land management.” Her coalition hopes that a gunning
ban in Colorado will lead the agency to stop it nationwide. “We’re
trying to set a precedent,” she
says.
Keefover-Ring says there are plenty of
nonlethal ways to keep coyotes away from calves and sheep, using
fencing, guard dogs, donkeys, llamas, sheds and strobe lights.
Craig Coolahan of Wildlife Services in Lakewood,
Colo., says it’s not so easy. “The simple fact is, many woolgrowers
are already using guard dogs, and they are somewhat effective, but
aerial gunning is necessary for what the herders can’t do.”
Copyright ©
2000 HCN and Katie Oppenheimer
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Environmentalists challenge aerial gunning program.
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