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War on Wildlife


December 2012

No Net Loss

War on Wildlife

by Wendy Harris

Wendy Harris is a retired citizen who comments on development, mitigation and environmental impacts.

How Private Interests and Bad Science Are a Lethal Combination for Wildlife

In September, the Wedge wolf pack was exterminated by the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife to accommodate a rancher who grazes on federal land. In the controversy that followed, questions emerged regarding the extent to which private interests shape wildlife management policies on public land. The answer shocked me. Millions of animals, disproportionately predators, are killed on public land each year to accommodate the livestock industry.

Welfare Ranching

The right to graze livestock on public land adjacent to private property has existed since our Country was founded. After a federal grazing permit system was created, these ranchers obtained the exclusive right to graze on allotted portions of public land in Washington and the western U.S. Because restrictions limit new permits, existing permits have a market value and are sold, transferred and leased. A large portion of the grazing allotments have been sold to corporations or affluent hobby farmers.

This system is referred to as “welfare ranching” for good reason. Ranchers are charged far less than market value for grazing permits. The graze fee is based on the value of forage to ranchers, rather than the cost to the tax-paying public. While the average monthly lease rate to graze is $8-12 dollars per head of cattle, the government charges $1.35. According to a 2005 report from the Government Accountability Office, the government spends a minimum of $144 million dollars a year to support public land grazing and recovers less than one-sixth of that cost in fees. Add the price for environmental damage and administrative overhead, and the environmental community believes the total annual public cost is $500 million.1

Livestock grazing is the single largest use of public land, and it is also the most damaging. A 2011 report by the federal Bureau of Land Management (which, along with the Forest Service, manages a majority of public ranch land) found that a disturbingly large percentage of public ranch land fails to meet ecosystem health standards, primarily as a result of commercial livestock operations. This impacts 260 million acres of western rangeland, including 14 million acres in Washington and Oregon.

Public land ranching results in a loss of biodiversity. Ranchers erect fences and build roads that obstruct the movement of wildlife. Fragmented land reduces wildlife access to food and water, breeding grounds or safe refuge and isolates subpopulations. Over-grazing strips public land of its vegetation, a primary source of food and habitat for animals. This increases the possibility of invasive plant and animal infestation. Livestock manure in streams and riparian areas degrades water quality. Herds of cattle compact soil, increasing stormwater run-off and soil erosion.

Wildlife is threatened more directly as well, through government sponsored predator eradication programs intended to protect livestock. Even threatened and endangered species are not safe, as exemplified by the delisting of wolves in three states, and extermination of Washington’s Wedge wolf pack. Everywhere in the west, state and federal governments are under intense political pressure by the livestock industry to kill predators. Some predators, such as wolves, benefit from counterbalancing public pressure for protection. Other predators, such as coyotes, lack strong public advocacy efforts and are being exterminated in large numbers.

USDA Wildlife Services

The worst damage is done through a predator damage control program administered by “Wildlife Services”, a branch of the United States Agricultural Department (USDA). While this little-known agency largely operates in secrecy, it plays a significant role in wildlife slaughter on public and private land. Last year, Wildlife Services reported killing 4 million animals, reflecting over 300 wildlife species. In 2010, the reported number was 1 million higher. Among the species killed are wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, bears, foxes, raptors, herons, otters, porcupines, beavers, migratory shorebirds and even swans.

USDA information indicates that high kill rates are occurring in Washington. Between the years 2006 and 2011, Wildlife Services was responsible for the statewide death of almost 3 million animals. This includes seabirds experiencing troubling population declines, bald eagles, and important terrestrial and aquatic predators such as coyotes, bears, river otters, muskrats, and beavers.

Whatcom County residents unknowingly contribute to Wildlife Services operations through a starling control program. The County has a $15,000 contract with Farm Friends, who subcontracts with Wildlife Services. But like many Wildlife Services efforts, this program is of questionable value.

Scientific evidence indicates that farm management practices, such as “bird-proofing” structures and modifying livestock habitat, are the most effective means of long-term starling control. Because starlings slowly migrate through an area, lethal removal is successful only in limited situations involving resident populations and localized damage. In other words, starling control programs generally do not work.

But the County contract does not require proof of program success even after half a million starlings have been killed. It does not require the use of farm management practices before lethal removal or restrict eradication to localized resident populations. In fact, the contract contains very few specifics, leaving Wildlife Services with discretion for how, when and where starlings will be killed.

Transparency Problems

If you are unfamiliar with Wildlife Services, it is not surprising. The agency works directly with ranchers, local organizations like Farm Friends and state wildlife management agencies. A Wildlife Services manager was recently quoted as stating that, “We pride ourselves on our ability to go in and get the job done quietly without many people knowing about it.”

Financial ties between the agricultural community and Wildlife Services inhibit development of sound wildlife management policies.

Wildlife Services is publicly funded, with 75 percent of its funding supporting the predator control program. But it also obtains about 1 percent of its funding directly from the livestock industry. The UDSA website states that program funding is a combination of federal appropriations and “cooperator-provided funds.” How many other federal agencies accept private funding from the direct beneficiaries of its programs?

Wildlife Services is fiercely protective of its relationship with contributing “cooperators”, as it is with most facets of agency operation. It will not publicly disclose which ranchers are “cooperators”, and it refuses to release field investigation reports. The agency claims this “would cause a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,” and that “disclosing this information will not shed any light on (federal) duties and responsibilities.”

It is difficult to obtain information regarding agency actions. Wildlife Services avoids transparency through complicated sub-contract arrangements and convoluted accounting methods. At a recent public meeting to address criticism, the agency refused to provide better information. A Wildlife Services manager stated, “to give tons of raw data to people would not be smart. Torture numbers long enough and they are going to confess to anything.”

Unlike other federal agencies, including the military, Wildlife Services does not allow the media to observe its operations. Wildlife is killed on public and private land with no public notice. Congressional Representative John Campbell (R-Irvine), a fiscal conservative, wants to know why the public is funding secretive actions to promote private interests. He asks, “Why won’t they let anyone go with them to see what they are doing? Why is there such a shroud of secrecy? Whose interests are they serving? That is the sort of thing we need to find out.”

It is known, however, that the agency provides excellent customer service. A complaint by a rancher regarding the potential for “predation” can result in lethal action. Nor are ranchers required to show that they have engaged in preventative techniques prior to requesting lethal removal. This type of “preventative” killing program” has been widely criticized. The National Humane Society accuses Wildlife Services of “over-reaching in a dramatic and destructive way and slaughtering animals, even before they do any damage.”

Bad Science

Wildlife Services justifies its policies based on outdated science. The planning policy that guides agency decisions was issued in 1994, based on decades old scientific information. The agency’s environmental analysis is also flawed. For example, its planning document analyzes environmental impacts for 17 species, although it engages in lethal actions that affect 300 species. While the agency lacks scientific data that predator based control is successful in protecting livestock, it ignores data establishing the importance of predators in ecosystem functions.

Critics allege that the cost of predator control exceeds the cost of predator damage. The overwhelming majority of livestock losses are the result of weather, disease and birthing problems, with less than 1–3 percent of losses attributable to predation. Yet, Wildlife Services continues to spend $30 million dollars a year on predator control.

Scientists and ex-employees assert that Wildlife Service methods are ineffective and can set off a chain reaction of unintended, often negative, environmental consequences. Predators are an important part of ecosystem health. Kill the predators, and soon, smaller mammals such as rats or rabbits overpopulate, bringing disease and/or destroying crops. This can also trigger an explosive increase in invasive species populations. Worse yet, coyote control, the primary focus of agency action, has been a failure. Many researchers believe that Wildlife Service policies have created smarter, more abundant coyotes.

Brutal, Indiscriminate Methods of Killing

It is the agency’s lethal control methods that generate the most controversy and lawsuits. The primary method of killing is aerial shooting. The agency also relies heavily on the services of trappers who use leg-hold and neck snares, traps and underwater cages. Other killing methods include shooting, denning (killing young in the den), and the use of hunting dogs, as well as poison. These methods are described by the Natural Resources Defense Council as “the worst of the worst killing methods.”

Many of these lethal control methods are indiscriminate and result in a large number of “unintentional kills.” Since 2000, Wildlife Services has reported killing 50,000 non-target animals, representing 150 species, such as federally protected golden eagles. However, that number is disputed as substantially understated by many credible sources, including former employees and supervisors, who assert that unintentional kills are covered-up, particularly when rare species or family pets are involved.

According to a former supervisor, “trappers felt that catching non-targets was a quick way to lose the tools of the trade and put Wildlife Services in a bad light.” A former agency trapper who snared and buried an eagle in Nevada stated, “that was not the only eagle I snared while working for Wildlife Services. I will not say how many. But my supervisor told me to bury the first one, and I figured that was what was supposed to be done all the time, so that is what I did.”

While Wildlife Services reports accidentally killing an average of eight dogs a month, another former trapper states that “we were actually told not to report dogs we killed because it would have a detrimental effect on us getting funded.” Dog collars have been removed from dead dogs and destroyed.

A wolverine, a mammal so rare that survival of each individual is crucial, was shot by a Wildlife Services trapper after stepping into a leg-hold trap in Idaho and suffering a “bad foot.” In the last ten years, Wildlife Services has reported a total of three wolverines caught in agency traps, but it is likely that the number of wolverines harmed is greater.

Particular criticism is directed at use of leg hold traps, a killing method banned in 80 nations, and prohibited or restricted in eight states, but used by Wildlife Services to kill 10,000 to 15,000 animals a year. Leg-hold traps kill slowly and inhumanely when the trap springs shut on an animal’s leg, leaving it to struggle in terror and pain, often for days, until it dies of exposure, injuries or exhaustion. While Wildlife Services recommends that trappers check traps every week, some traps are not checked for extensive periods of time.

Wildlife Services defends the use of traps, alleging high accuracy in killing targeted species. However, trappers that have worked for the agency indicate that non-targeted animal death is simply not reported by the agency. According to one trapper, the ratio was two non-target animals for every target animal trapped. Non-target animals are often too injured to be released and must be killed. When violations are caught, the consequences are incidental. In 2003, a trapper working for Wildlife Services plead guilty to burying a golden eagle that was accidentally trapped. He was fined $2000.

Very recently, graphic photos were published on Facebook, Twitter and the web by a Wildlife Service employee. The photos were removed after they were discovered by the environmental community, but are being widely circulated by the media. The photos depict the employee’s dogs attacking defenseless coyotes, raccoons, and bobcats caught in leg-hold traps. One caption reads, “My Airedale Bear with a sheep killing female.” Another photo showed a partly disemboweled coyote on a log. The caption reads “eagles got to this adult female before I did.” This incident has generated public outrage. (One of the least graphic photographs is being printed with this article.)

The use of poison also generates great controversy. One method involves the use of spring-loaded devices known as “M-44s” to release cyanide. This is intended to kill coyotes, but the devices have been triggered by other species, including humans. In at least 18 cases, employees and members of the public have accidentally been injured, but fortunately, to date, no human has died. Wildlife Services employees are required to carry amyl nitrate as a cyanide antidote, but members of the public recreating on public lands have no protection. According to one former Wildlife Services employee, “The public has no idea what danger they are in when they are out there with their families.”

Another popular poison used by Wildlife Services is Compound 1080, which is embedded in protection collars placed on sheep It is lethal to all animals, but is particularly deadly for dogs and there is no antidote. When a coyote bites a sheep in the neck, the collar releases the poison. Some poison is ingested by the coyote while the remainder drips onto the sheep (which invariably dies) and contaminates vegetation on the ground. The poisoned coyote often dies a painful death after hours of vomiting, staggering and convulsing. Because less than 10 percent of poisoned coyotes are recovered, coyote and sheep carcasses (which are legally allowed to remain on the range for a week) serve as poison bait stations for wildlife scavengers.

Conclusion

It is difficult to believe that so many animals are cruelly killed on federal land through public funding, based on outdated and environmentally damaging policies. It is even more difficult to believe all of this is being done to increase the profits of livestock operations. Yet, evidence reconfirms this over and over again.

And despite everything, Wildlife Services continues to survive and prosper. It has expanded its predator control services for recreational hunters. It promotes itself to the public with misleading or incorrect information. Check its website and you might be fooled into believing that Wildlife Services is a do-good conservation agency.

Achieving reform is challenging. Wildlife Services is protected by the powerful agribusiness lobby. Efforts by the environmental community to raise federal grazing fees and to create a voluntary federal grazing permit buy-out program gained momentum, but ultimately failed. Litigation has produced mixed results.

However, this issue is receiving greater attention as a result of the a three part expose in the Sacramento Bee by Tom Knudson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. The expose, entitled “The Killing Agency: Wildlife Services brutal methods leave a trail of animal death,” was published in late April. http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/28/4450678/the-killing-agency-wildlife-services.html. The Bee reported that the practices of Wildlife Services are indiscriminate, at odds with science, inhumane and sometimes illegal. I highly recommended this influential report to anyone who wishes to learn more about Wildlife Services.

Current efforts to challenge Wildlife Services focus on a bipartisan effort by four members of the U.S. House of Representative to open a congressional investigation. If you support this effort, you can contact Congressman Darrell Issa (D-California), Chair of the House Oversight Committee to request a hearing on the USDA’s Wildlife Services at Committee On Oversight And Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives, 2157 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515 (tel. 202/225-5074 or fax 202/225-3974). You can also contact Representative Rick Larsen. And let Whatcom County Council and the Executive know that you do not support the starling control program.

Sidebar: Public Subsidy to Kill Wolves

Information released by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife regarding extermination of wolves in the Wedge Pack confirms the large discrepancy between fees charged and program costs recovered. The entire wolf pack was killed to accommodate a public land rancher whose cattle were attacked. The cost of eradication was $77,000, or 20 percent of the state’s total wolf management program budget. In contrast, the rancher’s grazing permit fees were a total of $1,034, which amounts to $1.35 per head of cattle.

According to King 5 News, it would take the rancher “73 years of lease payments to equal the amount paid by taxpayers to remove the wolves.” The news organization also noted that “the cost to the public for an all access pass to National Forest land is $80. The [rancher] can raise 60 cows for the cost of a single pass.”

The State Cattlemen’s Association’s cites other costs that ranchers must bear which can equal or exceed the grazing permit fees. Ranchers must pay for the cost of installing and maintaining fences and they are required to remediate damage to soil and water created by cattle. There is a public benefit in the trails and roads maintained by the ranchers, and ranchers are often able to assist authorities by identifying illegal poachers.

Additional costs, privately incurred by ranchers, do not reduce the gap between the revenue received from grazing permits, and the costs to operate the public grazing program. Moreover, many of these costs are inherent to livestock grazing operations regardless of where the operations are sited. Even after accounting for any public benefit, public land ranching remains a heavily subsidized activity.

It is equally troubling that the WDFW, which enacted a wolf management plan intended to minimize the necessity for lethal control, spent 20 percent of its annual budget on lethal removal of one wolf pack. Not only did WDFW cave in to a disgruntled rancher, it did so shortly after implementing a wolf management plan. Experts believe that another wolf pack will soon repopulate the remote Wedge area.

(http://www.king5.com/news/environment/Legislator-wants-answers-on-decision-to-kill-Washington-wolf-pack-176885141.html)


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