“Every year, tens of thousands of bison, coyotes, wolves, and other wildlife are maimed, shot, poisoned, and even burned alive because the meat industry claims these animals interfere with raising animals for food. This war on wildlife is carried out with the full support of state and federal agencies, which fund so-called predator control programs.”

– FarmSancturary.Org

 

 “Animal agriculture directly kills annually nearly 50 billion animals worldwide, after subjecting them to the cruelties of factory farming. It also kills uncounted numbers of wildlife on land and in the seas.”

– Citizens for Healthy Options in Children’s Education, CHOICE.USA

 

 “In reality, ranchers are the most pervasively destructive force on our public land, with logging as a distant second. Via outlandish subsidies, you, I, and Uncle Sam support the cattle industry with drought and fire relief, fencing, water tanks, windmills, and bargain-basement grazing fees. Our government kills hundreds of thousands of wild creatures each year to protect ranchers’ herds against predators such as wolves, mountain lions, and coyotes.

 

In return we get erosion, endangered species, habitat destruction, flash floods, exotic weeds, desertification, and some of the most degraded landscape on Earth.”

– Tim Lenerich, Dispelling the Cowboy Myth, Earthsave.Org/News/03Summer/Cowboy_Myth.htm; 2004

 

“But it [cattle ranching] is anything but benign. It is the number one source of water pollution in the West. It’s the number one source of soil erosion in the West. It’s the number one cause of species endangerment in the West. It’s the reason we don't have wolves throughout the West. It’s one of the major reasons that more than four-fifths of all native fish west of the Continental Divide are endangered or threatened.”

– George Wuerthner of Eugene, Oregon, is one of the most outspoken leaders against public-lands ranching. From Dispelling the Cowboy Myth, by Tim Lenerich, Earthsave.Org/News/03Summer/Cowboy_Myth.htm; 2004

 

 “Nearly 20 million taxpayer dollars fund the trapping, poisoning, and shooting of native predators deemed a threat to agriculture by the USDA Wildlife Services agency, which each year kills approximately 100,000 coyotes, bobcats, foxes, bears, wolves, and other predators. In 2001 the program also killed 1.6 million other ‘nuisance’ animals.

 

Almost two-thirds of all large mammal species are threatened or endangered in the lower 48 states. Less than 10 percent of all endangered and threatened species in the U.S. is improving.

 

About 20 percent of all endangered and threatened species are harmed by grazing.”

– A Voice for Animals, VoiceForAnimals.Net; 2004

 

“In response to ranchers’ complaints of coyotes attacking cattle in southern Arizona, the federal government took to the air this past January, killing 200 coyotes. The hunt was conducted by Wildlife Services, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and took place on both public and private land.”

– Earth First! Journal, May-June 2006; EarthFirstJournal.Org

 

Some people would like the public to believe that pollution is the only and worst offender to wildlife in the U.S. While pollution does take an enormous toll, the reason populations of native animals in the U.S. have dwindled is that the animals have been killed to provide grazing land for livestock, and to protect grazing livestock.

 

To make it possible for cattle and other livestock to graze in open fields there has to be a safe haven created for them. This means that native animals have to be killed off. These animals include wolves, coyotes, foxes, lynx, mountain lions, bobcats, bears, elk, bighorn sheep, deer, porcupine, beaver, badgers, skunks, possums, prairie dogs, and antelope.

 

 “In 1914, Congress first appropriated money for the U.S. Biological Survey (now known as Animal Damage Control) to exterminate wolves from the face of the continent. Though the agency failed to eradicate the species entirely, by 1945 it had killed every wolf in Colorado.”

– Colorado Wolf Tracks, the newsletter of Sinapu.Org; 1996

 

Eliminating the native animals is done with poisons, with steel jaw leghold traps, by shooting them from helicopters, and by damaging their food supplies. The government offices involved in these activities include the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Animal Damage Control (ADC) program of the Department of Agriculture. According to Wildlife Damage Review, in 1994 the government spent over $56 million of federal, state, and cooperative funds to kill 783,585 wild animals.

 

The land that has been cleared of native wildlife is then used as pasture for grazing livestock such as cattle, sheep, and goats. The ranchers lease the land from the government, and they do so at very low rates that do not make up for the money spent by the government to manage the land for the ranchers. The balance is made up from tax dollars – thus providing government welfare programs for ranchers.

 

In addition to killing wild animals for pastureland, the U.S. Department of Agriculture also is involved in killing millions of birds. They regularly use poisoned rice laced with DRC-1339 to kill grain-eating birds, such as grackles, red-winged blackbirds, ravens, magpies, vultures, and yellow-headed blackbirds. The killing doesn’t stop there. That’s because predator birds, such as Cooper’s hawks and prairie falcons that eat the poisoned birds, also die.

 

Killing predator animals damages the natural cycle of native animal life. When the predator animals are killed off, the animals they feed on are able to reproduce in massive numbers. This has resulted in large populations of animals such as mice, rats, gophers, squirrels, badgers, prairie dogs, skunks, possum, rabbits, chipmunks, deer, and raccoons.

 

The ADC programs attempt to control the populations of the smaller animals by sending out trappers to eliminate them. They eliminate the smaller animals by burning them, by bludgeoning them, and by poisoning their young. Many smaller native animals are also killed to prevent them from eating the crops that are being grown to feed livestock, and to prevent them from creating nesting and dwelling holes in the ground, which may result in livestock injuring their legs.

 

To help control the population of some animals, such as deer, hunters are allowed to enter into controlled areas to kill a certain number of animals every year. When bows are used to hunt deer, about half of the deer escape with the bow stuck in them, and then the deer suffer slow, agonizing deaths.

 

“Trapping and/or hunting are allowed on more than half of the 540 U.S. National Wildlife Refuges.

 

According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, of 27 million people who visited refuges, 22 million came for wildlife observation, while only 1.2 million visited to hunt or trap animals.”

– A Voice for Animals, VoiceForAnimals.Net, 2005

 

The techniques used to kill off smaller animals, and to eliminate brush and other native plants used by larger animals, also harm the bird populations. Not only do birds die when they get caught in traps and when they eat poison meant for other animals, large birds die after eating animals that have been poisoned. A decrease in the bird population allows more insects to populate the land. To kill off the insects, the government and farmers use more chemical poisons. The pesticides then do even more damage to the bird population, create insects that are resistant to pesticides, destroy beneficial insects, and pollute the land and water, and so forth, in a cycle that would naturally take care of itself if man would not interfere.

 

      “The ADC program, created by the Animal Damage Control Act of 1931, is greatly responsible for the virtual extinction of the grizzly and wolf in the lower 48 states as well as for putting the black-footed ferret, jaguar, black-tailed prairie dog, bald eagle, and other wild animals in, or close to, the endangered category. ADC reported it poisoned 1.8 million animals in 1991 and distributed thousands of pounds of restricted-use pesticides to private individuals who poisoned untold numbers more. The U.S. Agency for International Development works with ADC to export ADC pest control practices and chemicals, including those banned in the U.S., to developing countries.”

– Wildlife Damage Review, the newsletter of Sinapu.Org;1997

 

Ranchers and BLM workers eliminate shrubs that are used for food and shelter by native animals, and then plant grasses to feed grazing cattle. By eliminating native plants that provide food and shelter for wild animals, by eliminating small animals that provide food for predator animals, and by killing all kinds of native animals, the government has had an enormous negative impact on the populations, life cycles, migrating patterns, and social structures of native animals of North and Central America. This is done at great cost to taxpayers to provide grazing land for livestock ranchers. It is welfare farming and it is destroying the biodiversity and ecosystems of the continent. Sadly, because more and more cattle are being raised on other continents, these practices are becoming the standard in other countries.

 

Predator animals not only manage populations of large animals in the natural circle of life, they also improve conditions for small animals, fish, insects, and plants.

 

When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park, willow trees, cottonwoods, and aspen trees began to grow more abundantly there. This was the result of elk seeking the safety of higher ground away from the wolves. The new vegetation has attracted other wildlife. The banks of the rivers and creeks, which had been damaged by elk, began to show more vegetation growth, which in turn improved the health of the rivers and creeks. This improved conditions for fish populations. And the new trees have also attracted native birds to nest there and provide shade for certain varieties of plants to grow.

 

      “Next to an all-out nuclear war, today’s intensive animal agriculture represents the greatest threat to human welfare in the history of mankind.”

– Farm Animal Reform Movement, FarmUSA.Org; 2005

 

“The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.”

– Charles Darwin

 

© 2009 John McCabe