How these animals were targeted — from shooting coyotes to poisoning birds — has prompted Congress to fund nonlethal initiatives within the program and conservation groups to call for sweeping changes to how Wildlife Services operates.
Adrian Treves, an environmental science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the origins of today’s rampant predator killing can be found in America’s early European settlers, who brought with them the mentality that wolves were “superpredators,” posing a dangerous threat to humans.
Last year, 68,000 coyotes were taken down by a variety of means, including ingestion of Compound 1080, a poison that causes acute pain in the form of heart blockage, respiratory failure, hallucinations, and convulsions.
One study he co-authored on wolf kills in Michigan found “a three times elevation of risk to livestock on neighboring properties after a farm received lethal control of wolves from Wildlife Services.”
But Wildlife Services’ primary goal is to protect the interests of livestock producers, USDA public affairs specialist Tanya Espinosa told me in an email — yet another subsidy for an already highly subsidized industry.
Starlings, which are targeted because they like to feast on grain at dairy farms and cattle feedlots, are mostly mass-poisoned with DRC-1339, also known as Starlicide, which destroys their heart and kidney function, slowly and excruciatingly killing them over the course of three to 80 hours.
The original article contains 1,678 words, the summary contains 225 words. Saved 87%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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How these animals were targeted — from shooting coyotes to poisoning birds — has prompted Congress to fund nonlethal initiatives within the program and conservation groups to call for sweeping changes to how Wildlife Services operates.
Adrian Treves, an environmental science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the origins of today’s rampant predator killing can be found in America’s early European settlers, who brought with them the mentality that wolves were “superpredators,” posing a dangerous threat to humans.
Last year, 68,000 coyotes were taken down by a variety of means, including ingestion of Compound 1080, a poison that causes acute pain in the form of heart blockage, respiratory failure, hallucinations, and convulsions.
One study he co-authored on wolf kills in Michigan found “a three times elevation of risk to livestock on neighboring properties after a farm received lethal control of wolves from Wildlife Services.”
But Wildlife Services’ primary goal is to protect the interests of livestock producers, USDA public affairs specialist Tanya Espinosa told me in an email — yet another subsidy for an already highly subsidized industry.
Starlings, which are targeted because they like to feast on grain at dairy farms and cattle feedlots, are mostly mass-poisoned with DRC-1339, also known as Starlicide, which destroys their heart and kidney function, slowly and excruciatingly killing them over the course of three to 80 hours.
The original article contains 1,678 words, the summary contains 225 words. Saved 87%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!