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Hi John,
The tally from the rogue animal-killing program known as Wildlife Services is in — and the numbers are heartbreaking.
Last year it wiped out 381 gray wolves, more than 60,000 adult coyotes, 434 black bears, 276 mountain lions and thousands more.
This mass extermination can't go on. You can help with a gift to the Stop Wildlife Services Fund.
All told, this program run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture slaughtered more than 400,000 native creatures in 2020 — and that number is almost certainly lower than the real total. We know from program insiders that it understates its kills.
More than 2,000 animals were killed by mistake, including bears, bobcats, mountain lions, foxes, muskrats, otters, porcupines, raccoons and turtles.
Even pets and livestock were taken out, victims of the indiscriminate nature of leghold traps, snares, poisons and other methods used by federal agents.
But there's reason to hope. The tally decreased from the year before, proving there are other ways to manage wildlife than by killing it.
Our legal fights are a part of the reason for this decrease.
We've helped stop the use of bird-killing poisons in Northern California and ended the federal use of strangulation snares in Washington, saving bears, wolves and cougars. Our supporters spoke out and convinced several communities to reconsider their dealings with Wildlife Services, saving hundreds of coyotes, raccoons and beavers.
In Idaho and Wyoming we won restrictions on the use of M-44s, devices that lure creatures with a sweet scent before spraying lethal poison into their faces.
But these cruel "cyanide bombs" still killed more than 7,000 animals last year, including a black bear, five dogs and dozens of foxes.
There's no justification for using M-44s to kill wildlife — and we'll keep up our legal actions across the country to permanently ban them.
These are fights we've shown we can win, but we can't quit until we put Wildlife Services out of the killing business once and for all.
Please help with a gift to the Stop Wildlife Services Fund.
For the wild,
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