Reforming a Rogue Federal Agency: USDA Wildlife Services
Since our inception, Project Coyote has been working to reform U.S. predator management as conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services (WS) program.
Using public taxpayer dollars to kill wildlife held in the public trust, WS claims that its goal is to allow people and wildlife to coexist, but nothing could be further from the truth. Wildlife Services wasn’t created to serve wildlife—it was created to serve an outdated management model at all costs. And its costs are high: Every year, hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars are spent to indiscriminately kill over a million animals. This staggering toll includes the killing of untold numbers of non-target animals, including companion animals, the loss or “misplacement” of 60 pounds of deadly strychnine-treated bait and over 2,000 lethal sodium cyanide capsules, and even the poisoning of a child in Idaho—the list goes on.
The best available science supports the exclusive use of nonlethal methods to prevent conflict before it happens. Learn more about these methods, and how they are cost-effective, humane, science-based, and ecologically-sound, here.
It’s time to put Wildlife Services out of the cruelty business. Join us in our efforts to hold the rogue program accountable to standards of public safety, humaneness, and transparency and ensure the health and wellbeing of people, wildlife, and companion animals.
USDA Wildlife Services FY2021 Data on Damage Management Actions and Funding Sources
(More than 64,000 coyotes killed plus 229 dens destroyed with untold numbers of young killed in the process.)
%
AERIAL GUNNED
%
TRAPPED
%
POISONED
%
SHOT
The above methods account for 96% of coyotes killed, with the remaining 4% killed using other methods including hounds, calling, spotlighting and den eradication.
What we’re doing:
Project Coyote is leading the way to reform U.S. predator management as conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services program. Here are a few highlights:
- We’ve helped communities investigate local Wildlife Service contracts and petition their local governments to adopt non-lethal management programs.
- We sued Mendocino County in California over its $144,000 contract with Wildlife Services for failing to conduct an environmental review in violation of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The county Board of Supervisors ended its contract with Wildlife Services after a groundswell of residents pushed for an end to the deadly program in 2021. Project Coyote’s Dr. Lute is working with Mendocino County to develop a program to support residents and local livestock operators with nonlethal conflict prevention and humane wildlife exclusion.
- We sued the counties of Plumas and Sierra for the same violation in their contract with Wildlife Services.
- We continue to raise awareness of the cruelty of Wildlife Services activities across the country in an effort to increase public outrage and demand the agency reform its activities.
What you can do:
- Read and share our latest press release about Wildlife Service’s killing in 2021 in which over 1.76 million animals were killed.
- Investigate local contracts with Wildlife Services in your community. Contact your County Clerk’s office to ask how to file a free records request. Make sure to request “all active contracts between the County and Wildlife Service and any reporting to County by Wildlife Services for any active contracts.”
- Contact your U.S. Representative to ask them to support and co-sponsor H.R. 4951, Canyon’s Law, which would prohibit the use of M–44 devices (“cyanide bombs”) commonly used by Wildlife Services, on public lands.
- Continue to expose Wildlife Service’s use of taxpayer money to fund the killing of millions of animals each year.
- Write a letter to the editor of your local paper to raise awareness of Wildlife Service’s activities.
- Sign up for our e-team and never miss an opportunity to take action.
- Support the fight with your dollars.
Further resources on Wildlife Services reform:
Tom Knudson’s investigative cover-series The Killing Agency in the Sacramento Bee
Peter Fimrite’s piece Wildlife groups take aim at lethal control of predators in SFGATE