The US Department of Wildlife services is "a killing business and it ain't pretty," says Carter Niemeyer, a 26 year veteran of the department. He's referring to the US Department of Wildlife Services, a government agency that is tasked with government-funded wildlife control. In practice this means the agency is a tax-payer supported operation that is paid to kill animals, some of which are considered among this country's most iconic.
According to the Sacramento Bee, wolves, coyotes, foxes, wolverines, bears and mountain lions are among the animals agents of this department regularly kill using means as cruel and indiscriminate as leg-hold traps, snares and explosive poisons as well as ariel gunning. Even more upsetting, the agency has also slaughtered some 50,000 non-targeted animals by accident since 2000.
In all Wildlife Services has killed over 150 different species of animal, many of them endangered in the past 12 years.
Tell Secretary Salazar to defund this agency. No more of our tax dollars must go toward animal slaughter!
Dear Secretary Salazar,
We the undersigned respectfully request that the Department of Wildlife Services be defunded. At a time when ever dollar the Federal Goverment spends is at a premium, it makes no sense to provide substantial resources for a government agency that operates in such an unscientific manner and that appears to be under virtually no oversight.
It is unacceptable to us that the methods employed by the Department of Wildlife Services are so indiscriminate that they frequently result in the suffering and death of tens of thousands of non-targeted animals including species that we are also spending considerable money to help recover.
Further, over the past several months it has come to the public's attention that employees of this department operate with little regard for the animals they are tasked to control, in some cases actually taking pride in the kills of wolves and other animals.
These actions are a violation of the public trust and an affront to people that disagree with the agency's actions. We believe that better, more humane, more scientifically valididated and more cost effective means exist to minimize human/wildlife conflict, to protect livestock and domestic pets and to ensure that our wild creatures and wild lands are treated with the respect that the people of this country expect and demand.
Sincerely,
