They shot them down from the sky.
It happened two winters ago in Adams County, but the federal government won’t say where. A pilot and gunner did it from a plane while flying low over wheat stubble on the Palouse or some desolate expanse in the Scablands.
The winds would have been calm. It was cold that day, around freezing, according to National Weather Service records. They could have started early in the morning, when wildlife is out and easy for a sharpshooter to see.
Exactly who wanted the animals dead and how much the killing cost is a mystery, but on Feb. 24, 2021, a little-known agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture killed 67 coyotes to protect cattlemen’s herds.
Wildlife Services kills and disperses animals. It was founded to aid ranchers and farmers but its role has grown over the decades. Today, the agency also prevents birds from hitting airplanes, rodents from damaging buildings and predators from eating young salmon, to list a few of its responsibilities.
In its own words, Wildlife Services provides “federal leadership and expertise to solve wildlife conflicts to allow people and wildlife to coexist.”
Many livestock producers say Wildlife Services helps them stay in business. Predators cost ranchers more than $200 million in losses every year, according to the Department of Agriculture.
“When you talk about dollars that predators cost us, personally for me it’s huge,” said Dr. Jill Swannack, a veterinarian and rancher who serves as president of Washington State Sheep Producers.
Wildlife Services didn’t make anyone available for an interview, but public affairs specialist Tanya Espinosa said in an email that the agency’s methods are “biologically sound, environmentally safe and socially acceptable.”
Conservationists tend to disagree.
Brooks Fahy, executive director of Predator Defense, has spent the past 30 years trying to dismantle Wildlife Services.
He learned about the agency while running a wildlife hospital in Oregon. People kept bringing him pets that had been caught in Wildlife Services’ traps or poisoned by M-44 devices — often referred to as “cyanide bombs.”
Fahy said Wildlife Services’ methods are scientifically unsound, inhumane and little more than a taxpayer-funded subsidy for agriculture.
“It’s a federal program that, on behalf of ranchers, kills predators to supposedly protect livestock,” he said.
Carter Niemeyer, a wolf expert and biologist who spent 26 years as a Wildlife Services trapper and supervisor, said some of the agency’s work is valuable. Unlike Fahy, he has no issue with killing animals that repeatedly cause problems.
But Niemeyer also calls Wildlife Services “the hired gun of the livestock industry.”
“We just spend way too much time overkilling carnivores,” he said. “I would term it needless killing. That’s what it is.”
Wildlife Services has an almost $200 million annual budget and kills nearly 2 million animals every year, including tens of thousands in Eastern Washington.
Yet despite its macabre work, few know the agency exists.
Sristi Kamal, deputy director of the Western Environmental Law Center, said Wildlife Services is one of the most opaque agencies in the federal government.
“They are shrouded in mystery,” she said.
Animal damage control
The federal government started killing animals on its own in the early 1900s. Different agencies have had the job over the years, and they’ve undergone occasional rebrands.
In 2021, the agency killed 1.8 million animals nationwide and 165,616 in Washington.
More than half of all animals killed throughout the U.S. were invasive species. Poisoning starlings and shooting feral pigs, two species that wreak havoc on ecosystems, doesn’t inspire much public outcry.
Northern pikeminnows, a native species that has flourished since the installation of dams throughout the Columbia River basin, eat millions of salmon and steelhead while the fish swim to and from the Pacific Ocean. Wildlife Services caught and killed more than 75,000 pikeminnows in 2021, all in Washington.
But wildlife advocates strongly oppose the killing of native animals.
For instance, Wildlife Services in 2021 killed more than 64,000 coyotes, 400 black bears and 24,000 beavers. Those figures include 614 coyotes, 32 black bears and 119 beavers in Washington.
Kamal and Fahy generally oppose the killing of carnivores, which is often done to decrease predation on calves and lambs. Predators control prey populations, they point out, and removing them disrupts native ecosystems.
Figuring out where Wildlife Services kills animals isn’t always easy.
In Freedom of Information Act requests, the Department of Agriculture redacts anything that could reveal the location of an agricultural operation. The department says it can’t release addresses because federal law prohibits sharing locations of farms or ranches that provide information.
The coyote controversy
The agency kills predators that can eat chickens, lambs, calves and other farm animals. In 2021, the agency killed more than 600 bobcats, 300 wolves and 200 cougars.
In Washington, cougars and wolves are managed by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. Fish and Wildlife has killed eight wolves and 114 cougars in the past two years.
Wildlife advocates emphasize that carnivores are an essential component of healthy ecosystems. Removing them can cause prey populations, like deer and rodents, to grow out of control.
“It creates more problems in the long run,” said Timothy Coleman, director of the Kettle Range Conservation Group.
Wildlife Services is probably best known for killing coyotes.
It kills tens of thousands of them every year in more than a dozen ways. Aerial gunning from a small plane, with shotguns, is the most common technique.
Catching coyotes in neck snares, shooting them from the ground and poisoning them with cyanide capsules are also standard methods.
While the job can be grisly, many ranchers say it helps keep them afloat.
The Washington Cattlemen’s Association declined to comment but Swannack, who raises sheep near Lamont, in Whitman County, said Wildlife Services is “a huge boon and benefit to the sheep industry.”
Swannack said ranchers do what they can to avoid killing predators. Fencing, flashing lights and loud noises can help. Guard dogs are effective. Some sheep producers will place a llama or donkey with their herds as a protector.
If none of that is enough, Wildlife Services is needed, Swannack said.
“When we can’t handle it ourselves, we can hire them to help us get rid of problem animals,” she said.
Wildlife advocates argue killing predators is an ephemeral solution. Studies have shown reducing populations causes female coyotes to produce more pups.
Fahy said if producers lose livestock, they should invest more heavily in sheds, guard dogs and other preventive measures. Taxpayers shouldn’t have to subsidize wildlife killing, he said.
“This isn’t rocket science,” Fahy said. “If you’re doing it the right way, you’re not going to have a problem.”
(c)2023 The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Wash.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.