Center for
Biological Diversity
August 2018s
Wildlife Services has killed more than 28,000 animals in the county over the past decade and kills about 3 million nationwide every year.
Bobcat - image from USFW
Siskiyou County to Seek Alternatives to Killing Thousands of Animals Each
Year...
YREKA, Calif.— Responding to legal pressure from a coalition of
animal-protection and conservation groups, Siskiyou County officials have
announced the suspension of its contract with the notorious federal
wildlife-killing program known as Wildlife Services, part of the U.S.
Department of Agriculture. The program has killed more than 28,000 animals
in the county over the past decade.
Siskiyou County’s decision came after coalition members warned the county in
June that its contract with Wildlife Services violates the California
Environmental Quality Act. Coalition members include the Animal Legal
Defense Fund, Animal Welfare Institute, Center for Biological Diversity,
Environmental Protection Information Center, Mountain Lion Foundation,
Natural Resources Defense Council, Project Coyote and WildEarth Guardians.
“Siskiyou is the fourth county to suspend its contract with Wildlife
Services as a result of our efforts,” said Stephen Wells, executive director
of the Animal Legal Defense Fund. “Other California counties with
wildlife-killing programs should sit up and take notice: This succession of
wins for wildlife has generated a momentum that is impossible to ignore.”
Under its Siskiyou County contracts, Wildlife Services killed approximately
28,000 animals in the County from 2008 to 2016. The program targeted
ecologically important native wildlife like coyotes, mountain lions and
black bears without assessing the environmental damage or considering
alternatives. Using inhumane and indiscriminate methods like traps and
snares, Wildlife Services also killed nontarget animals, including domestic
dogs and cats. The program, which has killed thousands of birds each year,
likely also harmed protected wildlife such as tricolored blackbirds.
“With another California county having now cancelled its contract with
Wildlife Services, I’m hopeful this victory marks the turn of the tide for
California’s wildlife,” said Collette Adkins, a biologist and attorney at
the Center for Biological Diversity. “Siskiyou County is smart to seek out
an alternative to this ineffective, cruel and harmful wildlife-killing
program.”
Siskiyou is the latest county in California to reexamine its contract with
Wildlife Services amid pressure from the animal-protection and conservation
coalition. Earlier this summer, Shasta County cancelled its contract with
Wildlife Services. In 2015, in settlement of a lawsuit filed by coalition
organizations, Mendocino County agreed to fully evaluate nonlethal
predator-control alternatives. And in 2017 a California court ruled in favor
of the coalition in finding that Monterey County must conduct an
environmental review before renewing its contract with Wildlife Services.
“Siskiyou County’s decision recognizes the unacceptable risk that Wildlife
Services’ methods present to the many threatened and endangered species that
call the county home,” said Johanna Hamburger, a wildlife attorney at the
Animal Welfare Institute. “This is a significant step that will protect
species such as the tricolored blackbird, which has declined by nearly 90
percent in the past 90 years, and is easily mistaken for other species of
blackbirds that Wildlife Services routinely targets.”
“We commend Siskiyou County for this enlightened decision,” said Camilla
Fox, founder and executive director of Project Coyote. “There are many
nonlethal methods and models for reducing conflicts between people,
livestock and wildlife that are cost effective, ecologically sound and
ethically defensible.”
“Communities across California are becoming models for successful
science-based human-wildlife coexistence,” said Michelle Lute, wildlife
coexistence campaigner for WildEarth Guardians. “We welcome Siskiyou County
to the growing community of people harmoniously living with wildlife in our
shared ecosystems.
Return to: Litigation