With a name that would
make George Orwell spin in his grave, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's ‘Wildlife
Services’ program is perpetrating a secretive, wasteful, ineffective, and cruel
war on wildlife.
Last week Wildlife Services drew public condemnation when it released a 665-page report acknowledging it killed over four million animals in 2013 alone, putting the blood of over two million native animals on U.S. taxpayers' hands. Join us in demanding
Wildlife Services cease the slaughter.
Compounding the horror of
the astronomical body count are the methods Wildlife Services employs. Not
satisfied with littering the landscape with bullet-ridden carcasses, Wildlife
Services widely distributes traps that indiscriminately kill or maim any
animal unfortunate enough to wander by. Wildlife Services also disperses
lethally toxic poisons like sodium cyanide M-44s and Compound 1080 across our
public lands. These methods result in agonizing deaths for literally millions of
animals.
If all that doesn’t make
your blood boil, consider that a growing body of research shows these methods
are both inhumane and ineffective. Many carnivore populations are
self-regulating. When faced with such unrelenting lethal pressure, some species
actually breed more and displace other species upsetting the ecological and social
balance. This can result in increased human-wildlife conflicts. Demand Wildlife
Services listen to the science and end the killing.
Wildlife Services’ cruel
practices are largely funded by our tax dollars, involving all of us in this
massacre. Please join us in expressing your outrage.
For the wild,
Drew Kerr
Carnivore Advocate
WildEarth Guardians
dkerr@wildearthguardians.org
Photo credits by permission from top right: coyotes—Sam Parks; black bear cubs—Tim Springer; cougar and kitten—Richard Badger; wolf—Sam Parks.
...and, over 400 black bears
...and, over 300 wolves