Tell Congress to Investigate, Defund Wildlife Services

Originally Posted: May 7, 2012

Tell Congress to Investigate, Defund Wildlife Services

[Ed. Note: For detailed information, read War on Wildlife: The US State Kills Millions of Animals to Protect the Agriculture Industry and the Beef Supply.]

FROM WildEarth Guardians

ACTION

Wildlife Services kills tens of thousands of animals each year with no accountability or oversight. The agency's killing programs are inhumane, unscientific, expensive, ineffective and occasionally illegal. The agency's war on wildlife endangers the public, their pets, and even its own agents. The death toll on our wildlife populations is unconscionable.

Tell your Congressional Representative and Senators to investigate this ongoing hazard to America's wildlife, public lands, and public safety. Wildlife Services is an expensive and unruly agency that is out of control. Please hold oversight hearings immediately and bring Wildlife Services to account.

Sign an online petition:
https://secure3.convio.net/wg/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=507&autologin=true&JServSessionIdr004=aevxhxazr2.app334b 

And/or better yet, make direct contact:

Contact your U.S. Senators
http://www.senate.gov/
 
Contact your U.S. Representative
http://www.house.gov/ 

INFORMATION / TALKING POINTS

This week the Sacramento Bee published a series of articles that exposes the dangers, corruption, and wanton slaughter of our nation's wildlife--including federally protected species such as bald and golden eagles. Wildlife Services kills tens of thousands of animals each year with no accountability or oversight. The agency's war on wildlife endangers the public, their pets, and even its own agents. The death toll on our wildlife populations is unconscionable.

Please see Sacramento Bee's exposé on Wildlife Services - http://www.sacbee.com:

SUNDAY, April 29

Wildlife Services is a federal agency that operates in secrecy, using brutal traps, poison and aerial gunning to kill thousands of animals, with accidental victims that include federally protected species, family pets and injured people.

MONDAY, April 30

Wildlife Services predator control is coming under fire from scientists, former employees and others who say it is expensive, ineffective and can set off a chain reaction of unintended, often negative, environmental consequences.

SUNDAY, MAY 6

Critics of Wildlife Services suggest solutions that include nonlethal control; curtailing aerial gunning; a ban on leg-hold traps, neck snares and cyanide poison; more transparency; cutting its budget; and perhaps eliminating the agency altogether.

These articles reveal that the agency's killing programs are inhumane, unscientific, expensive, ineffective and occasionally illegal. Congress must immediately investigate this rogue agency. No federal agency needs oversight more than Wildlife Services.

The Bee's exposé revealed that Wildlife Services routinely killed endangered species, but those kills literally get buried. Many people have been harmed by sodium cyanide M-44 booby traps, a favored weapon of the agency. Wildlife Services' own agents have been involved in 62 aircraft accidents resulting in 32 injuries and 10 fatalities since 1979 because of dangerous and unnecessary aerial gunning operations.

The American Society of Mammalogists has strongly objected to the continuation of the Wildlife Services' killing programs in a letter to the agency in March 2012. The ASM faults Wildlife Services for causing the indiscriminate deaths of millions of animals, but fails to focus on invasive species, or address wildlife-human conflicts through prevention, avoidance, and public education.

This ongoing hazard to America's wildlife, public lands, and public safety is unacceptable. Wildlife Services is an expensive and unruly agency that is out of control. Please hold oversight hearings immediately and bring Wildlife Services to account. Further, please consider defunding the agency's antiquated and inhumane killing programs. The American public and our wildlife deserve better.  

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Thank you for everything you do for animals!