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FROM Rachael Bale,
NationalGeographic.com
February 2016
An investigation in Harper’s Magazine this month documents indiscriminate and inhumane methods used to control predators on public lands in the West.
Wildlife Services—ever heard of it? No, not the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service. That’s something different. The Fish and Wildlife Service is part
of the Department of the Interior, charged with enforcing wildlife laws,
restoring habitat, and protecting fish, plants, and animals. Wildlife
Services isn’t your state fish and game commission, either, which issues
hunting and fishing licenses and manages local wildlife.
Wildlife Services is a federal agency under the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, and it specializes in killing wild animals that threaten
livestock—especially predators such as coyotes, wolves, and cougars. Outside
the ranching community, few have heard of Wildlife Services.
Since 2000, the agency has killed at least two million mammals and 15
million birds. Although it’s main focus is predator control in the West,
Wildlife Services also does things like bird control nationwide at airports
to prevent crashes and feral pig control in the South.
Reporter Christopher Ketcham’s investigation, out this month in Harper’s
Magazine, doesn’t mince words. The article is called “The Rogue Agency: A
USDA program that tortures dogs and kills endangered species.” Ketcham
exposes Wildlife Service’s use of poisoned bait, neck snares, leghold traps
(which are banned in 80 countries), aerial gunning, and cyanide traps to go
after animals that have attacked, or allegedly attacked, livestock grazing
on public lands. Ketcham’s sources—former Wildlife Services trappers—told
him they’ve witnessed or participated in these practices themselves and that
they go on to this day.
Ranchers who graze their cattle and sheep on public lands say the service
is vital, that they couldn’t sustain their operations without “taking care
of the predation,” as rancher John Peavey in Idaho told Ketcham. If
livestock get killed, ranchers are entitled to full compensation for the
dead animal, Ketcham says, plus they can call in Wildlife Services to take
out the predator.
But in most cases, the article notes, killing predators is not a
scientifically sound wildlife control method. Killing an adult male mountain
lion, for example, tends to lead to more attacks on livestock because that
established male kept out the more aggressive teenagers. Studies have shown
that this is true for wolves and black bears too. And as for coyotes—an
ecologist found that where coyotes are culled, more pups in a given litter
are likely to survive. That’s why even though Wildlife Services has killed
nearly a million coyotes in the past decade, their numbers always bounce
back.
Ketcham’s reporting tells of indiscriminate killing and inhumane
methods—from family pets getting stuck in traps to the use of poison that
causes a slow and painful death. Ketcham’s report also raises questions
about how America’s public land is being managed, land that exists as much
for the coyotes as for the ranchers, as much for the hikers and their dogs
as for the fishermen and deer hunters.
It’s an issue that Ketcham, who’s currently a fellow at MIT’s Knight Science
Journalism Program, has spent years investigating, and one he’s passionate
about. He spoke to Wildlife Watch earlier this week.
The headline is pretty strong: “The Rogue Agency.” Can you explain?
Congressman Peter DeFazio would tell you that it’s unaccountable and
secretive. He has tried to get information about its finances and its
operations, and he couldn’t get it.
Wildlife Services seems to be freely violating their directives,
especially when it comes to the EPA’s rules on the use of pesticides. [A
whistleblower Ketcham interviewed filed a complaint about how some
supervisors would help employees cheat on their tests to get certified to
use poison in the field.] They appear not to be operating with any kind of
science-based system to justify their lethal control against wildlife. And
when their own trappers are found to be committing what appear to be cruel
and inhumane acts against wildlife, nothing happens to those trappers.
How did it get to be like this?
Since its founding in 1885, Wildlife Services has served one purpose—to
clean up the American West for the ranching industry, so they wouldn’t have
to deal with predators or other animals they deemed pests. There’s an old
ethos in the ranching community—control and domination of the landscape.
It’s an almost biblical mandate to dominate the natural world.
Why has hardly anyone heard of this agency?
These are not people who are forthcoming about information. I spent a year
working on this story, and contacted Wildlife Services multiple times to ask
to go out in the field with a trapper to observe their lethal control
operations. They never granted me that request, claiming it would endanger
me. Then I sent them a list of 35 questions, almost none of which were
directly answered. If they’re not going to a respond to an informational
request from a senior congressman in the House, do you think they’re going
to answer a reporter?
You interviewed a former Wildlife Services trapper, Carter Niemeyer, who
said ranchers refuse to accept the true cost of their business model. What
does he mean by that?
Ranchers who run their livestock on public land impose a huge cost on the
public in terms of direct subsidies provided by the federal government, and
also via indirect subsidies like the government's predator control programs.
Take the case of Idaho sheep rancher John Peavey. He tells me that to feed
his cattle with a haying outfit on private land would cost hundreds of
thousands of dollars. When he lets his sheep out to graze on public grass,
that's hundreds of thousands of dollars he keeps in his pocket. How he turns
a profit, then, is by feeding off the taxpayer—a common loathsome practice
of business known as corporate socialism. He also imposes a cost on the
public's wildlife: He has them killed to ensure the safety of his animals.
Accepting the real cost of running livestock in the backcountry of the
public domain would mean accepting that when you put defenseless
domesticated animals out into the wild, they are occasionally going to get
eaten. And you have to also accept that wolves have every right to eat them.
It's their land too.
What do you want people to take away from this?
The public needs to be outraged, needs to take action. That means creating a
countervailing public interest to the dominant special interest of the
livestock industry. If there’s any sort of trouble on public lands that
affects ranchers in any minor way, that stockman calls his congressman,
calls his county commissioner, calls his councilman. He gets in their
office, gets in their face, and starts yelling. We need a countervailing
representative like that for the public interest, for the wild.
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