Range war: how the government uses your tax money to kill wildlife

How the government uses your tax money to kill wildlife.

The coyote kept up a steady pace as he ran along the range. The air was filled with the scent of spring. Soon, new litters of coyote pups would be born and, along with them, a horde of hungry mouths to feed. But right now, the coyote was intent on filling his own belly with mire or voles.

Focusing his senses in search of prey, the coyote was unaware of the Super Cub plane closing in on him from above. It wasn't until the 12-gauge autoloader had him smack in its sights that the coyote realized something was wrong and picked up his pace. But by then it was too late. A series of pellets exploded, sending the animal reeling to the ground. Mortally wounded, the coyote took shallow breaths as he lay bleeding. The death would be slow and painful. For the marksman, it was just one more varmint in a long trail of dead bodies for the day.

No ordinary hunter, the man in the Super Cub is part of the government's army of hired guns, otherwise referred to as "specialists," with a little-known federal agency called Animal Damage Control (ADC). As part of the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, a large majority of what ADC does is kill wildlife that are considered pests. Never heard of them before? Well, guess what? Your tax dollars pay for ADC's operations--$26,967,000 in fiscal year 1997, to be exact. More than half of these federal funds will be used for livestock protection, almost all going to the western states to benefit a few thousand ranchers, many of whom have grazing leases on public land at bargain-basement prices.

This is what has led critics to label ADC an expensive and unnecessary subsidy or, more precisely, welfare for cowboys. To obtain ADC's services for free, all a rancher has to do is ask. "The issue is that it's being done for the benefit of a private livestock industry. Public funds are being used to kill public wildlife for a handful of ranchers," charges New Mexico activist Pat Wolff. Her's is a sentiment rapidly picking up steam. "How many subsidies are American taxpayers willing to give these people?" questions John Perrine of Defenders of Wildlife.

Between 1990 and 1994, ADC killed more than 7.8 million critters, including 500,000 coyotes and 1,228 mountain lions. In the process, 35,074 "nontarget" animals were accidentally killed. These have included such rare and endangered species as swift foxes, federally protected gray wolves, bald eagles, lynxes, wolverines, and black-footed ferrets. In 1995 alone, the last year for which statistics are available, ADC was responsible for the deaths of 896,338 animals. What kinds of critters are considered to be pests? Everything from bobcats to foxes to bears, opossums, prairie dogs, beavers, and ravens.

ADC's primary mission, however, is killing coyotes, and the agency spends more money on livestock protection than on all its other programs combined. "They consider the only good coyote to be a dead coyote, and every one of them is a target," observes Susan Hagood of the Humane Society of the United States. In a war in which success is measured by body count, ADC's arsenal of weapons includes steel traps, neck, body, and leg snares (which tighten as the animal struggles to free itself), aerial gunning, "denning" (gassing coyote pups in their dens or dragging them out with grappling hooks and bashing their heads), M-44s (spring-activated ejector devices that fire cyanide into an animal's mouth), and livestock protection collars filled with poison. "One of the things I could compare ADC to are the humane societies and animal shelters in the United States, where they kill more than 20 million dogs and cats a year. It's often the only practical solution to a very serious problem," asserts Bill Clay, assistant deputy. director of ADC. [Ed.: The number is actually 6-8 million.] "Utterly ridiculous," retorts Hagood. "That remark would be laughable if ADC weren't serious in its attempt to compare itself to a humane society."

ADC's roots can be traced back to 1890, when western ranchers first began to pressure the federal government to help kill wolves, mountain lions, and grizzly bears. The final blow for predators came when the government began charging ranchers a fee for grazing on public lands. In a howl that could be heard across the West, ranchers demanded free federal help in controlling livestock losses caused by predators. The Animal Damage Control Act, passed in 1931, gave ADC the statutory authority to carry out a full-fledged battle on predators that is still in effect to this day. It didn't take long before wolves and grizzlies were virtually extinct in the lower 48 states.

The ADC was operating under the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) at the time, and there was no love lost between the two agencies. "The whole purpose of USFWS is to conserve and preserve wildlife. From 1939 to 1986 we were a program attached to USFWS that was actively killing wildlife," observes Clay. USFWS agents responded by derisively referring to ADC trappers as "gopher chokers" and "rat stompers."