Abolishing Federal Wildlife Killing

End the War on Wildlife
Every year literally hundreds of thousands of our nation's most majestic animals - including wolves, coyotes, grizzly bears and mountain lions - are poisoned, trapped and gunned down by the government. Sign our petition and help us run our ad to spread the message that we need to co-exist, not kill these beautiful animals. Download the ad that we ran in the Washington Post. Click here to listen to our expert discuss the issue during a radio interview.

 

Few taxpayers realize that we help fund an agency called “Wildlife Services,“ a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that wages a dirty war on America’s wildlife. Between 2004 and 2006, Wildlife Services killed over 6 million animals to protect agribusiness. The agency spends $100 million each year, and Wildlife Services’ job is to “eradicate” and “bring down” wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, bears, prairie dogs, and other wild animals.

In 2007, Wildlife Services killed 2.4 million animals, including 121,520 native carnivores such as coyotes, wolves, bobcats, cougars, badgers, and bears.  WildEarth Guardians is holding Wildlife Services accountable by:

• Leading efforts to end shooting wildlife from aircraft, a reckless, life-threatening endeavor;
• Asking the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ban the two predator poisons--sodium cyanide and Compound 1080--in part, because Wildlife Services’ handling of these toxicants has harmed federally-protected species such as bald eagles, hurt people, killed pets, and they poses a national security threat. We are also helping Congressman Peter DeFazio in his efforts to ban these poisons through Congressional action.
• Demanding that Wildlife Services publicly account for its abysmal track record involving its mishandling of dangerous poisons, aircraft crashes during aerial gunning activities, and other operations.

In February 2009, WildEarth Guardians issued a report called War on Wildlife, which documents this agency and its actions. The report is available for download here. At the same time, WildEarth Guardians and its partners sent a letter to the Obama administration asking for the government to defund Wildlife Services.

For more information about aerial gunning of wildlife, visit goagro.org.

You can also visit endthewaronwildlife.org and sign our petition to end animal killing.