from [email protected]
A Letter to the editor....
TAXPAYERS FORCED TO FUND GENOCIDAL WAR AGAINST WILDLIFE
Here it is, the twenty-first century, and the government
is still waging a genocidal war against our native wildlife. This "final
solution" extermination program is carried out by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture's "Wildlife Services" program, which kills between 1 and 2
million birds and mammals in the United States every year. Using
sadistic methods such as trapping, poisoning, and aerial gunning,
federal agents killed 11,313 birds and mammals in 1999 in New Mexico
alone.
Compassionate conservatives don't like this wasteful
program any more than animal protectionists do. We're all sick and tired
of seeing so many millions of our tax dollars wasted on this senseless
slaughter. Nationwide program expenditures now exceed $50 million
annually. In New Mexico, the program wasted $2.3 million of our tax
dollars in 1999, including $267,000 in a secret subsidy from the State
Legislature.
Wildlife-haters claim that coyotes and other wild
animals must be killed because they are a threat to livestock
businesses, but the facts tell a different story. Most livestock losses
are due to starvation, dehydration, disease, injuries, and exposure to
the elements - not predators. Negligent, abusive animal husbandry
practices and the custom of leaving domesticated animals on the open
range to fend for themselves are the real problems. Wild animals are
just convenient scapegoats.
Only a few hundred New Mexicans request government
wildlife-killing services on their properties. Their names and addresses
can be found on our website
www.new-west-research.org under the heading "The Hall of Shame."
As our database shows, most of the beneficiaries are
well-to-do "Rolex Ranchers" with big spreads. Millionaire newsman Sam
Donaldson, for example, had the federal wildlife-killers out to his
ranch 412 times in a five-year period, according to public records we
obtained in 1997. The others who sign up for this government welfare
program tend to be negligent and irresponsible or just plain ignorant
about living with wildlife. Whatever the justifications are, it is
morally wrong to use poisons, traps, and aerial gunning to sadistically
kill animals, whether they are dogs and cats or coyotes and bobcats.
I call on the news media to begin investigating and
exposing the atrocities being committed by our government in the name of
"predator control." I call on our elected officials at the county,
state, and federal levels to stop giving our tax dollars to these
murderous thugs. And I call on concerned citizens everywhere to do
everything you can - including non-violent direct action - to stop the
killing. The government's war against wildlife must be stopped NOW!
Patricia Wolff
P.O. Box 9125
Santa Fe, NM 87504
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Octavia, My Little "Lab Cat"
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