Most Americans have
never heard of the federal agency euphemistically known as Wildlife
Services. Yet it was a major force in eliminating wolf and grizzly
bear populations in the early 20th century, and today spends over
$100 million each year using mostly taxpayer dollars to kill more
than a million animals — primarily birds — but also bears,
bobcats, badgers, coyotes, mountain lions and foxes. Over the past
several years, Wildlife Services has killed an increasing number of
endangered species — 2,137 animals, most of them wolves — between
1996 and 2006.
The agency’s killing methods are
often cruel and include shooting wildlife from aircraft
(“aerial gunning”) and using poisons, traps and gas
cartridges to asphyxiate pups in dens. In 2006, to kill thousands
of coyotes, Wildlife Services in Texas used aerial gunning, neck
snares, gas cartridges, steel-jaw traps, M-44 poison-ejector
devices, and Compound 1080, a poison so lethal it’s been
banned in several states and countries.
Why such a
slaughter? Wildlife Services’ activities are a taxpayer
handout to the livestock industry. In Idaho, Montana and Wyoming,
for example, Wildlife Services spends more than 80 percent of its
mostly public funding as a political favor to agribusiness. The
underlying claim for the predator-killing program is that
it’s a cost-effective way to reduce livestock losses. But
large-scale predator eradication does little to help agribusiness
grow its bottom line. The most recent data from the National
Agricultural Statistics Service, for example, show that only 2.9
percent of total U.S. sheep production was lost to predators, while
4.9 percent was lost to other causes such as illness or disease,
lambing and weather.
Cattle statistics reveal an even
wider gap: In 2005, 0.18 percent of the cattle produced in the U.S.
were killed by predators; in comparison, 3.7 percent died from
other causes, including respiratory illness, weather and theft. In
other words: Predators cause less than 1 percent of total cattle
losses, and only 3 percent of total sheep losses.
True,
the U.S. General Accounting Office has found a small proportion of
producers absorb high losses from predators, but the vast majority
sustain no or negligible economic consequences. Effective,
appropriate and humane deterrents exist, including guard animals,
lambing sheds and electronic scaring devices.
Producers
have more to fear from free trade than free predators. In her 2006
study, biological economist Kim Murray Berger established that the
most important factors to sheep production are the price of hay,
farmhand wages and lamb prices, which represent 77 percent of
production variations from year to year.
Berger also
found that despite Wildlife Services’ killing of 5 million
predators at a cost of $1.6 billion from 1939 to 1998, the effort
had little effect on sheep industry trends. Even though the agency
has been killing predators for nearly a century, she points out, 85
percent of U.S. sheep producers have gone bankrupt.
Some
sheep growers argue that the program isn’t effective because
not enough predators are killed. But Berger found identical trends
in geographic areas where coyotes existed as in areas where they
were absent. Berger concluded that the decline of the sheep
industry has been caused primarily by unfavorable market
conditions, not losses to predation.
Because predators
are wrongly targeted as the problem, their value is too often
overlooked. Predators regulate the densities of other predator
– as well as prey – species. Wolf reintroduction in
Greater Yellowstone, for example, has helped plant and animal
systems come back into balance. Elk are naturally vigilant again
and, as a result, willows, aspen, cold-water streams and ponds,
fish, beavers, and riparian bird species are again thriving.
At the same time, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
reports that wildlife-watching activities are booming. For 2006,
wildlife-watching generated a whopping $46 billion in expenditures
— higher than hunting or fishing, both which are on the decline.
While Americans scan the landscape for critters, Wildlife Services
kills them.
After nearly a century of senseless wildlife
extermination, some are working for reform. Oregon Rep. Peter
DeFazio, D, has introduced a bill banning the use of Compound 1080
and M-44s. Additional reforms are needed as well, including a shift
in Wildlife Services’ funding priorities. Imagine $100
million spent each year on real solutions such as non-lethal
practices, compensation programs and recovery of the very species
Wildlife Services contributed to making endangered. The American
public should no longer be forced to pay for this agency’s
inhumane and indiscriminate annual slaughter.
The writers are contributors to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News (hcn.org). Lisa Upson, is a wildlife
advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Bozeman,
Montana. Wendy Keefover-Ring is the carnivore protection director
for WildEarth Guardians in Boulder,
Colorado.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
