06.23.14

Growing federal wildlife kills prompt new scrutiny

Houston Chronicle
By Kevin Diaz
June 21, 2014

WASHINGTON - Somewhere in Hunt County last year, in the vicinity of Dallas, a trapper for a little-known agency of the federal government spotted an armadillo tearing up some turf and shot it dead.

Nine others were trapped or snared, among more than 700,000 animals exterminated last year to protect farms, ranches, airports, golf courses, parks and other places in Texas where wildlife could cause problems.

The take, which varies from year to year, included 17,010 coyotes, 646 bobcats, 1,770 foxes, 30 mountain lions, 1,716 raccoons, 1,621 beavers, 19,535 feral swine and more than a half-million cowbirds and European starlings, which are considered an invasive species in North America. Wildlife Services managers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture meticulously cataloged every kill.

But as was the case with the armadillo killed near Dallas, thousands and thousands of federal incident reports provide little in the way of detail about how, why and where the animals were exterminated, beyond the name of the county. This lack of detail is one reason why the rising national toll on wild animals in the last six years has attracted a growing chorus of critics who question the impact on wildlife and the science behind it.

A few congressmen also have challenged the agency's $106 million annual budget, asking why killing predators for farmers, ranchers and other private interests should involve the federal government.

Environmentalists and other opponents of the program - which counts Texas as one of its biggest customers - have borrowed the small-government ethic of the tea party movement.

"For taxpayers to be paying for that in times of tight budgets is outrageous," said Rep. Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat who has forced an inspector general investigation of the agency. "Doing it at the behest of a local farmer or rancher who probably objects to so many other things the government does is particularly ironic."

Accountable management?

Wildlife Services officials argue that wildlife is a public resource that requires accountable public management.

"Why would we let the ranchers do to it whatever they want?" said Michael Bodenchuk, the agency's Texas director. "Hell, if we turned it over to them, what would the response be? We wouldn't have any control at that point."

As it is, industry groups and state and local governments footed all but $3.9 million of the $10.7 million the agency spent in Texas in 2013, an indicator of the importance of agriculture to the Lone Star State.

But the sheer number of kills, particularly of native animals, has alarmed conservationists who say the agency operates under ideas of the natural world that were born of another era.

"The days of the bison hunts and the fur trade are over," Amy Atwood, a staff attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, a national group that has challenged the federal kills. "Predators are incredibly important to ecosystems. It's really important to maintain healthy populations of carnivores in the landscape. When you start messing with predators, you create a ripple effect of problems throughout the ecosystem."

Federal officials say they're keeping wild animals out of the way of human activity without damage to native species, while protecting farmers and ranchers from needless losses.

Efforts to reduce the agency's lethality have been strongly resisted by industry groups.

"The damage to certain segments of agriculture from species that are both plentiful and adaptive is very real," said Gene Hall of the Texas Farm Bureau, which works regularly with Wildlife Services. "Clearly, those behind the (Center for Biological Diversity's) PR campaign have never seen what coyotes can do to the newborn babies of domestic livestock. I have. It's not a pretty sight."

Critics still question the agency's aims, particularly in the killings of coyotes, as native a Texas species as there is.

"It's making people feel better to think a potential problem is being eliminated, because coyotes are being targeted in their area," Atwood said. "But they can never guarantee that they're going to actually kill the offending animal."

Bodenchuk, a wildlife biologist, says he is no "cow man" working for special interests. And to him, finding a predatory coyote is fairly easy.

"A coyote in a goat pasture is probably eating goats," he said. "In the large conservation sense, we're just taking out the bad actors, and creating spaces for the ones that behave."

Shot, snared or poisoned

The stakes in Texas are huge for both sides in the debate. The 706,269 animals shot, snared, trapped or poisoned in the state last year represent nearly a fifth of the 4.3 million animals killed by Wildlife Services agents nationwide.

The totals vary widely from year to year, which has led to questions about consistency in the justifications for the agency's kills.

In 2012, government trappers and hunters killed a total of 436,064 animals in Texas. That was little more than half of the 2013 take. But in 2011, the overall number had spiked to 935,952.

Carol Bannerman, a spokeswoman for the Wildlife Services headquarters in the D.C. area, said much of the recent increase is explained by the agency's focus on controlling European starlings, a bird species introduced in New York City in the late 1800s.

Like blackbirds and cowbirds, starlings have a taste for crops like wheat and rice. Bannerman cited a 2005 study suggesting that blackbirds and cowbirds caused more than $21 million in damage a year to rice in five states, including Texas.

Last year, the agency eradicated 479,910 cowbirds in Texas, along with 111,491 red winged blackbirds and 68,096 European starlings.

Wildlife Services also have made a priority of controlling feral swine, which can carry disease. Last year, federal and state agents killed nearly 20,000 of the wild pigs in Texas, almost half of them from helicopters or planes, agency records show.

"Texas is pretty big in the invasive species control front," Bannerman said.

The agency's opponents have had little success on slowing or defunding the program. But they have raised the public's awareness with the help of a handful of incidents of apparent cruelty.

One was the case of a Wyoming-based trapper who posted photos on the Internet several years ago showing two dogs attacking a coyote in a leg-hold trap. That came around the same time reports surfaced of an agency trapper killing coyotes on a golf course outside Davis, Calif., prompting an outraged city council to cut its ties with Wildlife Services.

DeFazio, joined by California Republican John Campbell, cited the Wyoming incident in demanding an audit of the agency in 2012. In concert with Michigan Democrat Gary Peters, they renewed their request last year. This year, they got their wish, prompting an inspector general probe looking at the agency's wildlife management practices.

'Not mad at armadillos'

That was accompanied by a letter to Atwood from Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack promising that officials are "carefully reviewing" her group's petition for more tightly written policies and greater transparency.

Despite the agency's detailed list of kills, "it's really impossible to know what exactly they did, why, where and whether it was effective," Atwood said. "All we have are these lump-sum figures."

One example is the armadillos killed in Texas, for which the agency was able to provide only a general explanation. The prehistoric animals, which feed on soft bugs, are a hazard to lawns and golf courses, said the Wildlife Service's Bodenchuk.

"We're not mad at armadillos," he said, "but when they're doing property damage, there are very few options other than to remove them. You can't go out there and pick every bug off your lawn."

By the numbers

A little-known federal agency exterminated more than 700,000 animals last year to protect farms, ranches, airports, golf courses, parks and other places in Texas where wildlife could cause problems. Among the dead:

7,010coyotes

646bobcats

1,770foxes

30mountain lions

1,716raccoons

1,621beavers

19,535feral swine

More than500,000cowbirds and European starlings

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