We need to look at every government agency that either uses animals or is responsible for animal control to determine if low cost alternatives are available for research experiments or population control.
The Southwest's endangered Mexican gray wolves -- with just three breeding pairs left in the wild -- are hanging on by a thread. The last thing they need is one of their own gunned down by an employee of the government that's supposed to be nursing this wild population back to health.
Despite their immense importance, wolves are relentlessly persecuted by the livestock industry. These producers, as we show here, inflate the numbers of livestock losses from wolves.
An incident wherein a Santa Fe veterinarian set out beef-basted rat poison to kill a coyote that ate an outdoor cat -- and bragged about it on Facebook -- raises issues about ethics, values, biology, and our ability to co-exist with coyotes.
Less than one percent of the American cattle inventory was lost to native carnivores in 2010. This calls into question the tens of millions per year taxpayers spend on lethal control of native carnivores.
Cutting Wildlife Services' budget for the lethal control of carnivores is a win-win proposition for wildlife and the federal budget.
"Wildlife Services" is a secretive branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that annually kills millions of animals. Last year, it liquidated more than four million wildlife and pets.
Over 120,000 native carnivores -- including coyotes, wolves, bobcats, badgers, foxes, and bears -- are killed every year by Wildlife Services, largely at the behest of corporate agribusiness interests.
Each year, a federal agency kills thousands of coyotes, wolves, bears, eagles and other native carnivores on behalf of agribusiness using two lethal poisons.
I've studied coyotes for more than 35 years, and along with research performed by my colleagues, we've discovered that talking about "the" coyote is misleading.
