WildEarth Guardians

Monday, April 20, 2009
Poisoned Birds and Wetlands Prompts Legal Action

Government Agency, Wildlife Services, Responsible for Millions of Bird Killings
Contact: WildEarth Guardians

BISMARK, N.D. - Today, WildEarth Guardians gave notice to several governmental agencies and Congress that a misguided federal program designed to reduce red-wing and yellow-headed blackbird and grackle populations to benefit the sunflower industry in North Dakota and South Dakota violates federal law.

Even as bird enthusiasts readily purchase sunflower seeds for their feeders, a federal agency discharges a poison, an herbicide, petroleum-based dyes, and adulterated bird carcasses into wetlands (even on National Wildlife Refuges) to prevent birds from eating sunflower crops.

Since the 1980s, Wildlife Services, an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has poisoned tens of millions of migrating birds with the goal of reducing blackbird and grackle populations. Also, between 1991 and 2007, Wildlife Services has sprayed glyphosate from helicopters onto approximately 60,000 acres of wetlands in those states. Glyphosate defoliates cattails, thereby reducing nesting sites for migratory birds.

“Wildlife Services boasted that in 1988 alone it killed 3.7 million blackbirds in nine states,” said Wendy Keefover-Ring of WildEarth Guardians. “Wildlife Services has wrought the enormous unmitigated destruction on bird populations for decades, and now biologists report that even common birds are disappearing,” she added.

WildEarth Guardians findings include:

Wildlife Services uses DRC-1339, a toxicant so lethal to birds that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) indicated in several biological opinions that only strychnine has more potency.

In 2000, after realizing the destruction to bird populations and no benefit to the sunflower industry, the FWS limited Wildlife Services’ usage of DRC-1339 in the Prairie Pothole region of North Dakota and South Dakota. (DRC-1339 is liberally used to kill millions of starlings and other birds each year-usually at feedlots.)

DRC-1339 not only kills target species such as blackbirds and grackles but also kills non-target species such as song birds, grassland birds, and federally protected species. Because DRC-1339 can take days to act, the actual toll on bird populations is unknown.

In other actions, Wildlife Services sprays glyphosate, a cattail defoliant, into the Prairie Pothole wetlands from helicopters. It defoliates cattails to prevent birds from roosting in springtime, in hopes a reduced bird population will dampen sunflower consumption by wild birds in the fall.

“In its modern-day reenactment of ‘Apocalypse Now,’ Wildlife Services sprays a dangerous chemical into our nation’s wetlands and onto wildlife from helicopters. This effort benefits 43 sunflower producers but harms taxpayers and the environment,” said Keefover-Ring.

According to its 2008 environmental analysis (EA) on the Prairie Pothole region, Wildlife Services sprays up to 70 percent of all cattails in a particular wetland using a “striping pattern” with glyphosate to destroy roosting habitat. The EA actually claims this work benefits other wildlife but “could slightly limit the availability of cattail breeding habitat for Red-wing Blackbirds and Yellow-headed Blackbirds in localized areas” (emphasis added; EA 2008 at 3).

Other findings include:

According to studies, blackbirds and marsh wrens, aquatic invertebrates, small mammals, white-tailed deer, and non-migratory birds are harmed by cattail removals because they utilize these habitats during the winter.

A 2007 study indicates that cattail-poisoning actions cause unknown harms to wildlife populations. Amphibian species, because of their porous skin, are easily harmed by herbicides.

Wildlife Services’ 1994 programmatic environmental impact statement discloses that glyphosate is toxic to aquatic organisms and that toxicity increases as temperatures rise, making it doubly toxic to rainbow trout.

“The Obama Administration and Congress must hold Wildlife Services to account; Wildlife Services deserves line-item elimination because it needlessly obliterates our wildlife, destroys the environment, and pollutes our drinking water for a handful of people engaged in agribusiness,” stated Keefover-Ring.

See WildEarth Guardians’ Notice of Intent to Sue: letter_blackbird_suit_4-15-09.pdf.