As the Trump administration shapes its environmental policies, we hope the newcomers to Washington will resolve this paradox: The American taxpayer spends billions of dollars every year for the benefit of wild animals, fish and birds, including some of our most beloved species. So it may come as a surprise that the public also has to pay for the killing of such creatures on a mass scale.
The program operates under an agency called Wildlife Services. It is not part of the Department of the Interior, which has the primary responsibility for conservation programs. Wildlife Services is part of the Department of Agriculture, and its mission is to help farmers and ranchers who have an aversion to predators.
That animal category includes coyotes, of which the agency killed more than 75,000 in 2013, along with 866 bobcats, 3,700 foxes, 12,186 prairie dogs, 419 black bears and three eagles, using methods such as shooting, poisoning and trapping.
Some of the culling is needed—to control non-native pests such as feral hogs, to eliminate the danger posed by birds at airports, and to stop the spread of rabies. But a lot of the killing is a favor to ranchers, eliminating predators that sometimes feed on unguarded sheep and cattle, and to farmers, rescuing their crops from hungry fowl.
That leaves Wildlife Services in the position of slaughtering animals that other agencies are trying to help. Wolves, which once ranged throughout the continental United States, were nearly wiped out by hunters and trappers, and it has taken decades to rebuild their numbers in the wild to the roughly 5,500 now in the lower 48 states; Alaska has close to twice that number. But this agency slays hundreds of wolves every year.
A few questions arise: How solid are the claims it uses to justify lethal methods? How effective are they? And does killing predators help or harm the environment? Wiping out wolves may be good for sheep, but it’s also good for deer and elk, which in the absence of their natural enemies can wreak havoc on trees and other plants, destroying habitat that other wildlife depend on.
Often protecting livestock is not the point. Wildlife Services slaughters hundreds of thousands of birds, including mourning doves, sandhill cranes and redwinged blackbirds, so they don’t snack on crops farmers grow.
One strand of good news is that in October the agency settled a lawsuit filed by WildEarth Guardians, agreeing to stop operating in some 6 million acres of Nevada wilderness, and to update the science it uses in making decisions.
For a long time, Wildlife Services’ mass killing of predators was the sort of thing to which the public was not likely to object. But in the 21st century, with awareness of environmental issues, the agency likely has to change its ways.
We hope the Trump administration jump-starts a reduction in this widespread waste of money and wildlife.