Wildlife Services. “Opaque and Obstinate”


A Mystery Trapper

The morning of May 21, 2014 began with a phone call.

“Wildlife care center,” I answered.

“Yes, Wildlife Service?” the caller began, “The raccoon you trapped had babies and now they’re dead. My mother needs them removed.”

For a second, I wondered if we had done this. Like many wildlife care organizations, we try to help people humanely resolve wildlife conflicts, sometimes, if necessary, encouraging wild mothers to pack up their babies and leave. Usually we counsel people to tolerate the animals’ presence until the babies are ready to leave the den, and then close up whatever access allowed the situation to begin with.

And we don’t use traps. It couldn’t have been us.

We quickly sorted out the case of mistaken identity and I offered to send a team over to her mother’s house to look for the problem. Then I got on the internet to find out who would have been the trapper.

The homeowner’s daughter said he called himself Wildlife Services, which struck me as odd.

As an oil spill response team member, I’ve worked alongside agents from US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services (USDA-APHIS) animal damage control branch, called Wildlife Services (WS). Although rarely, WS agents have been brought in to these tragedies as experts in wildlife capture. This is not a universally held view. WS agents could be said to be experts in rounding up birds.

Over the last decade WS has been in the news more and more often, developing a reputation. That reputation isn’t good. If I was trying to drum up business, I certainly wouldn’t want to be associated with these guys.

In Southern California, January 2005, I had my first experience with Wildlife Services, when a WS agent used a cannon net (a large net rapidly deployed by fired 2 pound projectiles) to capture oiled and beached Western Grebes (Aechmophorus occidentalis).

42 of these sick and cold seabirds were huddled out of sight next to a slough that drained to the Pacific Ocean. Unable to tolerate the water due to their oil contamination, they were now consigned to slow death by dehydration and starvation unless they were rescued.

The cannon net was used on this group of 42 birds. Unfortunately, the net killed two Grebes, cutting them in half. Had these wild birds been people or even domestic animals in jeopardy, there would be no discussion of using potentially lethal means to attempt rescue. Animals in need of rescue are patients, not targets.

Dave Marks and colleague with Cannon net
USDA Wildlife Services agent Dave Marks and colleague prepare cannon net for use during Kalamazoo River Enbridge pipeline spill response (photo: USFWSMidwest(1))

Christmas Eve 2009, WS agents shot and killed at least 60 birds out of thousands who were attracted to a school of fish in San Franicisco Bay at the end of one of Oakland Airport’s runways. These birds included Comorants, Gulls and even Brown Pelicans who had been taken from the Federal Endangered Species list only a week before the shooting. Carcasses and wounded birds alike were left behind by the agents. Witnesses managed to bring five wounded birds into care. Sadly, none survived.(2)

This was an entirely natural situation where a very temporary condition, a flock of birds feeding on a moving school of fish, were cruelly gunned down and left to suffering deaths, when clearly some knowledge, common sense, or observation, would have demonstrated that as the fish moved away from the airport, so would the birds. This is in fact what happened. No matter how you look at this it was stupid and senseless.

In Michigan in 2010, a pipeline carrying tar sands oil ruptured leaking over one million gallons of diluted bitumen into Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River. I worked with several WS agents who consistently chose life-threatening measures that ignored the well-being of our patients in order to rack up captures. Techniques such as the use of drugs (alpha-chlorolose), hand-held net guns, and cannon nets were used, against the advice of experienced oiled wildlife caregivers. And in one very memorable meeting, wildlife caregivers had to threaten to leave the response in order to prevent WS agents from shooting oiled Canada geese rather than rescue them.

 

‘Opaque and obstinate’, Wildlife Services ignores calls for reform

Wildlife Services (WS), under various names and assigned to various departments, has been in action for nearly 130 years. Their “mission” has been to control wildlife that has been deemed an economic threat to agriculture – whether eating grain or eating livestock. Beginning early in the 20th century, Wildlife Services turned its attention to Wolf eradication. At this same time, WS began to receive funding from Congress, from States and from institutions to use strychnine and other means to kill not only Wolves, but Coyotes, Squirrels, Prairie Dogs and many more species, whose only threat was their existence.

As early as 1931, internal reports expressed alarm over the methods of killing, the numbers of animals killed, the mistaken kills, the cover-ups, the stonewalling, the secrecy. Olaus Murie, a biologist and early conservationist who worked for the agency (then named The Bureau of Biological Survey), who had killed many Wolves, Coyotes, Mountain Lions and more, wrote a report (i.e. the Murie Report) critical of their practices, and opposing the goal of predator eradication (3). Through the following decades, appointed advisory panels submitted reviews, such as the Leopold Report in 1964 (4), and the Cain Report in 1972 (5), that have consistently taken to task WS practices, citing excessive killing, inappropriate methods such as aerial gunning, and irresponisble use of poisons, as serious problems in need of reform.

Almost more importantly, reviewers find the lack of transparency and accountability within the program as perhaps the most urgently needed reform. The Cain Report (1972) is worth quoting at length:

“[I]t is clear that the basic machinery of the federal cooperative-supervised program contains a high degree of built-in resistance to change. Not only are many of the several hundred field agents the same former “trappers,” but the cooperative funding by federal, state, and county agencies, and by livestock associations and even individual ranchers, maintains a continuity of purpose in promoting the private interest of livestock growers, especially in the western rangeland states. The substantial monetary contribution by the livestock industry serves as a gyroscope to keep the bureaucratic machinery pointed towards the familiar goal of general reduction of predator populations, with little attention to the effects of this on the native wildlife fauna.

Guidelines and good intentions will no longer suffice. The federal-state predator-control program must be effectively changed. It must take full account of the whole spectrum of public interests and values, not only in predators but in all wildlife. This will require substantial, even drastic, changes in control personnel and control methods, supported by new legislation, administrative changes, and methods of financing.”(4)

Yet reform doesn’t come.

Now this “rogue” agency (6) is in the news again for the staggering numbers of wild animals that it kills each year. June 7 the Washington Post published the latest statistics reported by Wildlife Services. In 2013 WS agents killed over 4.4 million animals. Roughly half of those killed were native species, including River Otters, Bald Eagles, Black Bears, Bitterns, House Finches, Cougars, and Coyotes.(7) This is a nearly 25% increase over 2012’s 3.4 million killed, about half which were also native species. Why the increase? No explanation was offered.

Characterized by Congressmember Pete Defazio as “one of the most opaque and obstinate” agencies he’s had to deal with, Wildlife Serivces operates in nearly every level of our public life with very little accountability, from remote wild lands to highly developed urban regions such as the San Francisco Bay Area.

Two years ago, in the Sacramento Bee, in Tom Knudson’s series on Wildlife Services, former WS agent Gary Strader describes being told by his supervisor, when he first snared a Golden Eagle, that if no one else knew about it, he should just bury the federally protected bird and forget about it.

Strader says that the motto of WS has been, “shoot, shovel, and shut up.”

He says that after that eagle, he just never asked again, figuring it was WS policy.(8)

Wildlife Services kills family pets, threatened and endangered species and other animals who were not targeted, but who are now dead all the same.(9)

Against decades of scientific, practical and ethical recommendations, Wildlife Services continues to trap, shoot from helicopters, poison, even burn young mammals in their dens. These practices can only occur behind a wall of secrecy.

The opacity of Wildlife Services prohibits public debate and understanding, making regulatory oversight impossible. Without oversight, WS has been shown time and again to kill animals, both wild and domestic, in any manner or number which they see fit and literally bury the evidence.

 

Wildlife Services in your hometown

When our team arrived at the scene of the raccoon trapping incident, they found a horrible mess of maggot-eaten baby raccoon carcasses. The homeowner was heart-sick. Her daughter was angered. She said that the trapper assured them that he had searched for babies and found none. He assured them that is was a single male adult raccoon causing the problem. He told them that there was only one legal course of action: trap and kill the racoon.

petition pic 1
Infant raccoon in care whose mother was trapped. Most baby mammals brought into our hospital are the victims of thoughtless trapping. (photo: L. Corsiglia/BAX)

We were told that the trapper had been recommended by Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office Animal Control Service. Animal Control had given them his telephone number.

The trapper either lied or he is incompetent. The raccoon babies were in the typical location that mother raccoons select as safe a den site. They were in the void between the bathtub and the wall. Anyone who has tried to locate raccoon babies in a house quickly learns to look there first. Obviously this trapper had not done so. With both venting and education on my mind, I wanted very much to speak with the trapper.

We had only his first name and a phone number. His outgoing message is eerily terse, “You have reached Wildlife Services.” So far he hasn’t returned our calls.

That number isn’t on the Animal Control website. Apparently you have to ask.

However, now that I knew I was looking for the so-called county trapper, I finally discovered what I was looking for. And it was disturbing.

Our county trapper is a USDA-APHIS Wildlife Services agent.

As it turns out, Humboldt County spent $67,000 this year on its contract with USDA-APHIS Wildlife Services for so-called integrated wildlife damage management. This was up $14,000 from the previous year.(10) There have been contracts every year as far back as the late 1990s. I presume that years prior have simply not yet been digitized so are inaccessible through the internet. Yet even with this regular yearly contract, I can find no report detailing the activites of WS in our county, and the county has yet to respond to my request for any such reports.

According the Humboldt County contract, 40 of the 58 counties in California have a cooperative agreement with USDA-APHIS, with values ranging from $20,000 to $140,000 or more.

USDA – Wildlife Services took in $116 million in 2013 from various contracts and cooperative agreements. Over $7 million came from California and over $4 million of that from cooperative agreements like the one WS has with Humbodlt County.(11)

And all this money funds unnecessary death and inexcusable cruelty. This raccoon family was killed, not because they were denned in a house, but because an irresponsible WS agent took actions that he either did not understand, or knew were cruel.

This need not have happened. Wildlife rehabilitators across our state, our country, and the world routinely help our neighbors co-exist with wild animals. Respect for the wild and living with our wild neighbors are the approaches most aligned with the values of communities everywhere. In this age, WS practices are outmoded, outdated and an out and out shame. If members of the public weren’t opposed to these practices their would be no need for WS to hide. No one wants a secretive agency stalking through our neighborhood, indiscriminately killing animals.

The secrecy of WS is a threat to our communities. In our neighboring county, the WS agent who holds the county contract is called “Dead Dog” by county residents due to all the family pets he is believed to have killed.(12) Yet when I asked if people would attend a meeting of their county’s Board of Supervisors to complain or seek his termination, I was told by one resident that “it would never happen. He knows where we live.” Other residents have said they just try to get along with him, and avoid provocations. Meanwhile, as long as he can kill with impunity, people’s pets, livestock and property are not safe.

There is legitimate need to manage the interactions between human society and wild animals. A mountain lion in the lambing shed is a situation with no good outcome. Humane solutions – non-lethal, science-based and shown to be more effective in the long run – exist. But without transparency and accountability, there can be no assurance that this or any agency will make real effort to seek these solutions, which we demand again, as we have over the course of this program’s existence.

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(1) photo: Dave Marks (L) and Tim Wilson (R) (USDA Wildlife Services) https://secure.flickr.com/photos/usfwsmidwest/5239068994/
(2)“Birds killed to protect planes at Oakland airport” by Jason Sweeney, Oakland Tribune, Dec 30, 2009(2) Thinking like a Wolverine: The Ecological Evolution of Olaus Murie; James M. Glover Environmental Review: ER Vol. 13, No. 3/4, 1989 Conference Papers, Part One (Autumn Winter,1989), pp. 29-45 http://www.jstor.org/stable/3984389

(3) Thinking like a Wolverine: The Ecological Evolution of Olaus Murie; James M. Glover Environmental Review: ER Vol. 13, No. 3/4, 1989 Conference Papers, Part One (Autumn Winter,1989), pp. 29-45 http://www.jstor.org/stable/3984389

(4) Predator and Rodent Control in the United States, Advisory Board on Wildlife Management, appointed by Sec of Interior, S Udall; A.S.Leopold, et al, March 9, 1964 (Leopold Report)

(5) Predator Control 1971: Report to the President’s Council on Environmental Quality by the Advisory Committee on Predator Control, S.A. Cain, et al; January 1972 (Cain Report)

(6)“Petition targets ‘rogue’ killings by Wildlife Services” by Darryl Fears, The Washington Post, December 15, 2013 http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/petition-targets-rogue-killings-by-wildlife-services/2013/12/15/c749b3b2-5e8b-11e3-bc56-c6ca94801fac_story.html

(7)“USDA’s Wildlife Services killed 4 million animals in 2013; seen as an overstep by some” by Darryl Fears, The Washington Post, June 7, 2009 http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/governments-kill-of-4-million-animals-seen-as-an-overstep/2014/06/06/1de0c550-ecc4-11e3-b98c-72cef4a00499_story.html

(8) “The killing agency: Wildlife Services’ brutal methods leave a trail of animal death” by Tom Knudson, The Sacramento Bee, April 29, 2012 http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/28/4450678/the-killing-agency-wildlife-services.html

(9) “Suggestions in changing Widllife services range from new practices to outright bans” by Tom Knudson, The Sacramento Bee, May 6, 2012 http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/06/4469067/suggestions-in-changing-wildlife.html

(10) Approval of United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services Agreement No. 13-73-06-0254-RA http://co.humboldt.ca.us/questysgranicus/144400/144403/144404/144468/144494/approval%20of%20united%20states%20department%20of%20agriculture%20wildlife%20services%20agreement%20144494.pdf

(11) Wildlife Services Federal and Cooperative funding by Resource Category FY 2013 http://www.aphis.usda.gov/wildlife_damage/prog_data/2013/A/Tables/PDR_Table_A.pdf

(12)“Lunch with Dead Dog” by Bruce McEwen, The Anderson Valley Advertiser, March 26, 2014 http://theava.com/archives/30044

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California’s first wolf in 90 years may have pups in Oregon!

Wolf-OR7-DFG-Shinn
OR-7, in one of the only photos taken while he was in California (photo: CDFW)

Exciting news! OR-7, or Journey, the most famous wolf in the world, first wild wolf in western Oregon since the 1940s as well as the first wild wolf in California since 1924, may have finally found what he was looking for: a mate!

As reported today, biologists tracking Journey since he was a pup in Northeast Oregon have strong evidence that the wandering male has met up with a black female wolf in the Rogue River/Siskiyou National Forest in Southwest Oregon. While it isn’t confirmed that they are denning or have pups, their movements, still being captured by Journey’s radio-collar, indicate the strong possibility. It will be mid-summer before biologists will approach the pair to see if they have pups.

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Killing Contests Soon to Go

Sign Project Coyote’s ONLINE PETITION HERE

Predator Killing Contests in California

Did you know that killing contests are common in California and the rest of the country? Hard to believe, isn’t it? Here we are in the second decade of the 21st century, a march of civilization toward greater understanding of the world, the solar system, the galaxy and beyond, back all the way to the bang that began it all. And still there is debate if it makes sense (for men and boys, mostly, although certainly women and girls aren’t excluded) to attempt to kill the most, the biggest, the most rare – by whatever metric – to kill for competition; – to slaughter for a reward.

A short list of the species targeted by killing contests includes, pigeons, raccoons, doves, bobcat, prairie dog, woodchuck, deer, turkey, crow, wolf and of course, the least protected or respected mammal native to North America, coyote.


Killing Coyote

Coyote ‘calling’ contests, in which teams of hunters often using battery powered coyote callers attract coyotes so that they can be shot, are held nearly everywhere. At the time of this writing there is a contest underway in Washington state. There is also an online predator killing contest open to hunters across all of the United States and Canada currently being held that is sponsored by Foxpro, a maker of coyote and other wildlife callers. (Contestants are encouraged to post “tasteful” photos of the predators they’ve killed. Raccoons, badgers and wolverines are worth 1 point, coyotes, bobcats and lynx are worth 2, wolves, 3 and cougars are the big prize, worth 5 points.)


Coyote killed after being called in to range. These kids were taught this.

Even highly urbanized New Jersey holds coyote killing contests. In some the one who has shot the most pounds of coyotes wins. In others it is the quantity of individual animals, in other contests other criteria may obtain.

Just a month ago in February, 40 Coyotes were killed in the annual Big Valley Coyote Drive sponsored by Adin Supply Co. in Modoc County, California. Tens of thousands of people, led by Project Coyote, petitioned the California Fish and Game Commission in 2013 to stop that year’s drive to no avail. Wildlife advocates continued to press for reform, by petition as well as by expert testimony to persuade the Commission to prohibit these contests.

On the eve of this year’s Modoc contest, the California Fish and Game Commission voted unanimously to put consideration of prohibition of such contests on their agenda. Speaking in favor of this review, Commission President, Mike Sutton is reported to have said he’s “been concerned about these killing contests for some time. They seem inconsistent both with ethical standards of hunting and our current understanding of the important role predators play in ecosystems.”

Though small, this is an historic movement toward co-existence with coyotes. Reviled by the ranchers and sporthunters who’ve been re-shaping North America for over 400 years, coyote’s eradication has been at the heart of nearly indiscriminate state-conducted and state-sanctioned trapping, shooting and poisoning wherever coyotes may live.


AB2402 and Congressman Jared Huffman

What’s driving this change? A remarkable California law known as AB2402. Before his election to congress representing the North Coast in November 2012, Jared Huffman was a member of California’s State Assembly, where he chaired the Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee. February 2012, he introduced AB2402, a bill that would make a few minor adjustments to California’s Department of Fish and Game(DFG), that when carried out, would make for sweeping change.

Seemingly superficial, AB2402 changes DFG’s name to the Department of Fish and Wildlife – a change intended to reflect the conservationist mission of the agency. In keeping with this, AB2402 also requires the Department and the Commission to:

use ecosystem-based management informed by credible science in all resource management decisions to the extent feasible. It is further the policy of the state that scientific professionals at the department and commission, and all resource management decisions of the department and commission, be governed by a scientific quality assurance and integrity policy, and follow well-established standard protocols of the scientific profession, including, but not limited to, the use of peer review, publication,and science review panels where appropriate. Resource management decisions of the department and commission should also incorporate adaptive management to the extent possible.

Science-based ecosystem management is not exactly the language of respect for Mother Earth. Still, this law now demands that predator management policy must at least follow the basic precept of making sure that methods actually achieve goals. Definitions of the terms ‘adaptive-management,’ ‘credible science’ and ‘ecosystem-based management’ are also supplied in the text of AB2402 (see below).

The science of coyote management has already demonstrated that lethal measures, intended to reduce populations, presumably because of actual or potential damages to ‘livestock’ or ‘game herds,’ don’t work. Coyotes’ reproduction increases when they are stressed. Shooting a member of their family group is an obvious cause of such stress, as any member of any family group ought to be able to understand. Coyotes fight back and their most formidable weapons are adaptation and renewal. Or, as apparent although unheeded folk-wisdom among ranchers in Wyoming states it, “kill one coyote, two appear.”

Still the barbarism of the past persists. The coyote enjoys absolutely no protection whatsoever in the current California mammal hunting regulations. In fact, they are expressly mentioned in this regard in Chapter 6, Section 472(a):

The following nongame birds and mammals may be taken at any time of the year and in any number except as prohibited in Chapter 6: English sparrow, starling, coyote, weasels, skunks, opossum, moles and rodents (excluding tree and flying squirrels, and those listed as furbearers, endangered or threatened species).

There are no limits imposed by the state on killing coyotes.

AB2402 may have a much wider revolutionary effect than the Assembly and Senate even knew. Or perhaps the change in perspective over the last hundred years in Western science that has agreed in some respects with a more holistic apporach to life and the web of life is finally beginning to stick.

Whatever the cause for this change, the mandate for peer-reviewed, science- and ecosystem-based management has led to the creation of the Wildlife Resources Committee within California’s Fish and Game Commission to review predator management policy. This has the potential to go a long way toward peaceful co-existence and proper respect for coyotes and other maligned predators.


Wildlife Agencies Need Your Input

Now the Commission will formally decide on the regulations regarding killing contests as well as predator management overall. In a few days, 19 March, the Commission will meet via teleconference with key locations across the state hosting gathering places for public participation. On 16 April in Ventura, coyote contests will be on the Commission’s agenda for discussion. A vote is expected at either the June meeting in Fortuna or in August when the Commission meets in San Diego. (click here for FGC meeting schedule)

Meanwhile, predator management review has been taken up by the Wildlife Resources Committee, co-chaired by commissioners Jack Bayliss and Jim Kellogg. Their next meeting will be in San Francisco, 7 May. Public participation in these meetings is important.

Right now, you can help the Commission understand that these wanton, violent wastes of wild lives interfere with the will of the people to modernize the Department and strive to meet the actual science-based goals of wildlife conservation. To support the Commission in finding that Californians want these contests prohibited please sign Project Coyote’s online petition here – also, use their well-crafted letter to send a stronger message to the Fish and Game Commission as well as the director of the Department of Fish and Wildlife urging these agencies to carry forward the good work begun in 2012 with AB2402. (see below for a brief explanation of the roles of the Commission and the Department)


Killing Contests Must End

Killing contests, for any species, are outmoded, outdated, and an out and out shameful vestige of a more ignorant time. Let’s return to our right relationship with Mother Earth. Let’s show Coyote we’ve learned a few things.

Let’s show Coyote and all that is wild the respect they deserve.

coyote pup 3 June 13 - 03Coyote pup at Humboldt Wildlife Care Center June 2013 – this orphaned pup’s mother was shot and killed. He was released 3 months later. photo Laura Corsiglia/BAX

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California Department of Fish and Wildlife

California Fish and Game Commission

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife

new definition of terms for California Fish and Game Code

Adaptive management means management that improves the management of biological resources over time by using new information gathered through monitoring, evaluation, and other credible sources as they become available, and adjusts management strategies and practices to assist in meeting conservation and management goals. Under adaptive management, program actions are viewed as tools for learning to inform future actions.

Credible science means the best available scientific information that is not overly prescriptive due to the dynamic nature of science, and includes the evaluation principles of relevance, inclusiveness, objectivity, transparency, timeliness, verification, validation, and peer review of information as appropriate. Credible science also recognizes the need for adaptive management (preceding) as scientific knowledge evolves.

Ecosystem-based management means an environmental management approach relying on credible science, as defined above, that recognizes the full array of interactions within an ecosystem, including humans, rather than considering single issues, species, or ecosystem services in isolation.

How the Fish and Game Commission and the Department of Fish and Game interact, briefly and oversimplified:

For those unfamiliar with how these agencies interact, the legislature introduces bills that might eventually become law. The Fish and Game Commission is tasked with turning that legislative mandate into regulations and policy which will be executed by the Department of Fish and Wildlife, through law enforcement and scientific observation. As an example, say it became law to protect crows. First, after the governor signs the bill, the Fish and Game Commission may review existing regulations, determiming that a crow season with a daily bag limit of 24 and a possession limit of 48 doesn’t meet the new code stating that crows may not be taken except as permitted in the case of human health risks, livestock depradation or crop damage amounting to more than $25,000. So, the Fish and Game Commission now writes a new regulation that eliminates crow season. Wildlife Officers begin citing violators and biologists continue to study crows and crow populations, monitoring for effectiveness of the regulations as well as their necessity.

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