In the final installment of the 3-part series, Tom Knudson investigates how the role of USDA Wildlife Services may change in the future. Should the agency be disbanded? Should it be reformed and given different responsibilities like controlling only invasive, non-native species? Should its predator control program be defunded?
There is obviously a problem with [...]
Continue Reading →This installment of Tom Knudson’s series in the Sacremento Bee investigates the efficacy of USDA Wildlife Services’ predator killing program to benefit wildlife. In short, it doesn’t, it generally causing more harm than good and could be having impacts on disease such as the plague due to the increase of rodents after control actions.
In [...]
Continue Reading →Tom Knudson of the Sacremento Bee has been working on this very important and eye opening series about USDA Wildlife Services for several months. I was contacted by him in December last year and we talked about several issues related to WS and their killing.
This first installment of three introduces people to the agency [...]
Continue Reading →I think it’s safe to say that this couldn’t be called a trend, but last year a funding shortfall for USDA Wildlife Services shortened their coyote killing season by two months in Montana while at the same time the number of domestic sheep that coyotes killed ended up being lower by 1,900. The effectiveness [...]
Continue Reading →Brooks Fahy, of Predator Defense in Eugene, Oregon, has put together an account of Robert Norie, the owner of Bella the husky, and the ordeal they went through after Bella was caught in an unmarked USDA Wildlife Services snare set for wolves in Idaho’s Boise National Forest in August 2010.
Wildlife Services has been [...]
Continue Reading →Contained in the annual wolf report to be released later this week by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) are the findings of a panel formed to review livestock depredation investigations attributed to wolves. In at least three cases ODFW found that there was insufficient evidence to support a conclusion that wolves killed [...]
Continue Reading →Tonight Rocky Barker published an official response from Wildlife Services on his blog. Surprisingly, Wildlife Services actually explains what the stickers represented but they go on to give the standard non-apology, apology which apologizes to people who might have been offended.
It amazes me that, with the microscope that we and others have put [...]
Continue Reading →For many years I’ve heard rumors of photographs of a Wildlife Services plane stationed in Rexburg, Idaho with wolf footprint stickers on it for each wolf the crew had killed. Here they are. No other words needed.
Continue Reading →According to Senator Max Baucus drone aircraft could potentially be used to kill predators.
“Our troops rely on this type of technology every day and there is enormous future potential in border security, agriculture, and wildlife and predator management” – Senator Max Baucus (D-MT)
The developers of the drone say that they can sense the [...]
Continue Reading →After receiving a groundswell of public comments prompted by Western Watersheds Project and local wolf advocates’ tireless effort the Blaine County Commission voted to require the Flat Top Ranch and The Nature Conservancy to provide a predator management plan emphasizing non-lethal protection of livestock prior to the Commission’s final approval of the ranch’s conservation easement [...]
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