Wildlife Services and Its Eternal War on Predators

By Ben Goldfard Published: January 25, 2016

From High Country News Wildlife Services and its (http://www.hcn.org/issues/48.1/ wildlife-services-forever-war-on- predators) eternal war on predators

The federal agency has been researching nonlethal Wildlife Services overwhelmingly targets invasive means to protect livestock for decades. So why is it species and nuisance birds: Over 40 percent of its still killing so many carnivores? 2.7 million kills in 2014 were European starlings. The verb that people most often associate But it’s the slaughter of native predators — mostly with coyotes is “howl,” though it fails to to defend livestock and revenue-generating game capture Canis latrans’ vocal spectrum. Wolves animals like deer, often on public land — that howl. Coyotes also yip, squawk, whine, bray, outrages environmentalists. In 2014, Wildlife bark, wail and croon. First one starts — Services exterminated 796 bobcats, 322 wolves, motivated by changing barometric pressure 580 black bears, 305 cougars, and 1,186 red or its neighbor’s insolent gaze or who knows foxes. And that’s nothing compared to coyotes. what — and another joins in, and another, and That year, the agency killed 61,702, one coyote soon a discordant chorus hollers skyward, every eight and a half minutes. voices melding into an eerie drone. And then one coyote drops out, and another, and the That bloody reputation notwithstanding, scientists aural tapestry unravels to a single thread until at the agency’s Predator Research Facility have the original soloist, too, tapers off. And then spent decades considering more peaceful it’s silent on the steppe. deterrents: guard dogs, electric fencing, motion- activated alarms, and strings of flags, called So it sounds at the Predator Research Facility in fladry, that confuse carnivores. Researchers also Millville, Utah, when I visit Julie Young, the wildlife study coyote behavior — how dominants and biologist who directs the station, one crisp October submissives interact, how individuals learn from morning. The 165-acre compound, which houses neighbors, how they defend territory. Young and 100 coyotes in fenced enclosures, is operated I talk inside an observation tower that stands, by the National Wildlife Research Center, the scientific arm of an agency called Wildlife Services. panopticon-like, near the facility’s center. Below If you’re well acquainted with Wildlife Services, us, pairs of coyotes pace wedge-shaped pens. a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, No two animals look alike — we see rust-tinged you’re likely a rancher who relies on the agency, foxy ones, robust wolfish ones, scrawny piebalds. or a conservationist who despises it. Otherwise, One lopes clockwise around its pen; two more jog you may have only a vague idea that an army of along a fence line, like mirror images. A coyote trappers has used your tax dollars to kill millions trots to the tower’s base and stares up, watching of animals every year for most of the past century. the watchers.

ProjectCoyote.org PROJECT COYOTE PROMOTING COEXISTENCE P.O. BOX 5007, BETWEEN PEOPLE & WILDLIFE THROUGH f o e s c t n er te EDUCATION, SCIENCE, & ADVOCACY LARKSPUR, CA, 94977 ing coexis Wildlife Services and its eternal war on predators

Officials radio-collar a wolf after darting it from a helicopter. USDA

The tower’s interior has fallen into disrepair: seems fitting: Wildlife Services annually eye-popping coyote kill total represented Paint peels from walls, smudges cloud publishes voluminous charts tallying its the agency’s lowest figure in more than 20 windows, dead flies litter sills. The coyotes kills, but other information — why it killed years, though whether that’s a one-year have proven too smart to let humans observe which creatures, at whose behest, and after aberration or an emerging trend remains them. “They know when you’re in here, and no attempting what alternatives — remains to be seen. “We’ve always had nonlethal matter how long you sit, some never behave elusive. Activists and journalists have long methods, but we’re getting more proactive normally,” says Young, a Southern California sought to drag the agency’s lethal activities in recommending them,” says John Steuber, native with startling aquamarine eyes and into the public glare. Wildlife Services has Wildlife Services’ Montana state director. an ebullient laugh. “We’ve tried having three weathered exposés (including a 1991 High “We’re evolving with the rest of wildlife Country News feature), multiple federal people walk in and two walk out. But coyotes management.” can count.” Now Young uses the room to set investigations, scathing environmental up video cameras. The coyotes haven’t figured group reports and countless angry petitions. Still, 100 years of tradition can breed inertia out they’re being recorded, yet. “This is an agency whose time has passed,” in any organization. Though biologists at the Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., Wildlife Services’ Utah field station have studied nonlethal A canid starts to yip, and soon the whole most vocal congressional assailant, told the techniques since 1972, body counts have research center is singing again. I ask Young Los Angeles Times in 2014. mostly stayed level. “The National Wildlife what the nearby town thinks of the ruckus. Research Center does good work, and Nobody seems to mind, she says. One In response to criticism and evolving neighbor was stunned to learn that he lived science, Wildlife Services claims that it’s their scientists collaborate with all sorts of near coyotes at all. He thought he’d been changing course. Agency scientists and non-agency people,” says biologist Bradley hearing cheers from a football stadium. officials have spoken at Humane Society Bergstrom, who chairs the Conservation conferences, launched new nonlethal Committee of the American Society of That the Predator Research Facility evades research projects, and held workshops Mammalogists. “But they don’t seem to detection without being altogether hidden on deterrence techniques. Even 2014’s influence field operations.”

All the science in the world means nothing, in various ugly imbroglios, including taking reported 118,000 in 2014, far more than in other words, unless it sways the agency’s eagles, wolverines and family pets as other carnivores. Dogs finished second. field trappers — and the states, counties, collateral damage. Whistleblowers have municipalities, private businesses and described fellow specialists siccing hunting According to agency officials, specialists ranchers whose contracts supply half dogs on defenseless coyotes and leaving strive to remove only the offending animals of Wildlife Services’ funding. Antipathy traps unchecked for months. “These when trappers resort to lethal measures. toward predators often runs bone-deep individuals have such deeply entrenched “Although we emphasize the use of among those partners. Reform, therefore, mindsets that it’s hard to imagine how nonlethal tools … no one tool provides may require transforming attitudes at the the agency can ever be reformed,” argues 100 percent protection,” Wildlife Services agency’s grassroots, rather than merely Brooks Fahy, director of the nonprofit Western Regional Director Jason Suckow assailing it through courts and Congress. Predator Defense. Wildlife Services nearly and National Wildlife Research Center “Until Wildlife Services is told differently lost its predator control funding to a 1998 Director Larry Clark wrote in an email by the people who pay the bills, it’s hard to House bill, but was saved by eleventh-hour to High Country News. “In many cases, imagine real change,” says former agency lobbying from ranching-state lawmakers. producers have already tried and exhausted biologist John Shivik. “Managing animals is their nonlethal options.” easy. Managing people is really hard.” To be sure, combating carnivores is just one task among many, and killing animals Oftentimes, however, coyotes also face Westerners have been battling carnivores that damage crops and livestock occupies population reduction, a presumed-guilty since before Meriwether Lewis shot a grizzly a smaller proportion of Wildlife Services’ policy critics call “mowing the grass.” along a Montana creek in 1805. But Wildlife attention than it once did. These days, Terminate enough coyotes with poisons, Services’ story doesn’t truly begin until the agency also eradicates harmful feral traps, and aircraft-based guns, the logic 1915, when Congress allocated $125,000 pigs, fights rabies, protects endangered goes, and you can pre-emptively quell to exterminate wolves, coyotes and other sea turtles and drives birds off runways. livestock conflicts or protect mule deer. predators. Sixteen years later, President “We help keep people safe and healthy, “The closer preventative work is associated Herbert Hoover created the Division of and strive to do it in a way that won’t with lambing or calving, the more successful Predator and Rodent Control (PARC) to impact wildlife populations,” says agency it is,” explains Steuber. “If you do it six remove irksome wildlife. PARC, Wildlife biologist Buck Jolley. “You don’t think about months ahead, there’s a good possibility Services’ progenitor, took plenty of fire: In it when you’re flying, but there are people that other coyotes will move in. But if you do 1964, a committee of scientists led by A. nationwide relocating thousands of raptors it right before, you give calves a chance to Starker Leopold — son of Aldo Leopold, to keep planes in the air.” grow to where they’re less susceptible.” A America’s most famous carnivore-killer- 1999 experiment in Idaho and Utah found turned-defender — published a report Still, around a quarter of the agency’s that fewer than 1 percent of lambs were lost concluding the agency was slaughtering budget goes toward protecting livestock. to coyotes in pastures strafed with aerial far more animals than could be “justified in And no predator occupies Wildlife Services’ gunning, while losses in untreated fields terms of total public interest.” attention like coyotes, fast-reproducing hovered near 3 percent. generalists that over the past century have A handful of name changes colonized the United States’ length and External researchers, however, challenge notwithstanding, Wildlife Services’ breadth, from Alaskan tundra to Cape such studies. Adrian Treves, a University of predator playbook has changed little Cod beaches. In Chicago, eastern coyotes Wisconsin-Madison conservation biologist, since. Operations, one former trapper have learned to follow traffic lights; in notes fatal flaws with the aerial gunning told me, tend to be “very professional, not New York City, they roam rooftops. In the paper, including substantial differences just driving through the desert with our West, their fierce intelligence makes them between the pastures studied. Shoddy guns out.” Yet as reporter Tom Knudson formidable foes for ranchers. Though experimental design is not an isolated documented in a 2012 Sacramento Bee hazards like disease, foul weather and issue. When Treves and his colleagues series, the agency’s specialists, as its lambing complications take a much greater recently sifted through more than 100 trappers are called, have been implicated cumulative toll on sheep, coyotes killed a papers on lethal and nonlethal predator

ProjectCoyote.org PROMOTING COEXISTENCE BETWEEN PEOPLE & WILDLIFE THROUGH f PROJECT COYOTE o e s c t n er te EDUCATION, SCIENCE, & ADVOCACY P.O. BOX 5007, LARKSPUR, CA, 94977 ing coexis Wildlife Services and its eternal war on predators management, they found a mere three that amount of inertia involved” in its preference says Williamson, “and this was going to take adequately deployed randomized controlled for lethal control, Shivik writes. more time at the scene versus just setting a trials, what Treves calls the scientific “gold trap. I think that was a huge mistake.” standard”— all of which tested nonlethal Shivik, a gregarious biologist with close-set methods. “The standard of evidence in the blue eyes and tousled brown hair, cut his That attitude, Shivik believes, stems partly field is really low,” Treves says. “There has teeth in coyote research under the tutelage from Wildlife Services’ funding mechanism, never been a properly designed study of of Bob Crabtree in Yellowstone. When the whereby “cooperators” — the agency’s lethal control.” young scientist assumed control of the term for those who contract with it — share Predator Research Facility in 2002, he operational costs. In 2013, cooperators Coyotes, too, seem almost supernaturally launched an ambitious nonlethal program, provided the agency $80 million, compared resistant to eradication. As one maxim investigating aversive taste conditioning, with $85 million in federal money. As a goes, “Kill one coyote, and two show up territorial marking with coyote urine, and a consequence, trappers can feel pressure to its funeral.” “When you reduce the heat- and motion-activated alarm called the to appease their de facto clients. “I was out number of breeding adults in a territory, Critter Gitter. He even found evidence for with a specialist once, and he said, ‘John, there’s more food to go around, and that potential “guard coyotes,” territorial animals I think the nonlethal stuff is worth trying,’ ” food is shunted to the pups,” says Bob whose fear of fladry also kept submissives Shivik says. “ ‘But unless I show up with a Crabtree, an ecologist who began studying at bay. dead wolf on the tailgate, they don’t think coyotes in Yellowstone in the 1980s. Pup I’m doing my job.’ ” survival skyrockets — and since alpha While Wildlife Services awarded him raises coyotes with young kill the most livestock, and promotions for publishing in prestigious Sam Sanders, a former Wildlife Services eliminating coyotes willy-nilly typically journals, however, trappers seemed to assistant district supervisor from eastern fails to reduce predation, an inconvenient ignore his research. Sometimes, his Nevada, corroborates Shivik’s account. truth corroborated by the agency’s own nonlethal tools conflicted with traditional According to Sanders, who departed the researchers. Extermination can also ones: M-44s, for instance, may kill guard agency in 2011 and later founded a private catalyze disastrous chain reactions: dogs alongside coyotes, leaving some pest control company, his supervisors Soon after the government began slaying specialists reluctant to prescribe dogs. At favored aerial gunning for its visibility, even carnivores in 1915, rabbit populations annual state meetings, he found himself in situations where other tools would have exploded, and the agency poisoned politely disregarded. “They were always proved more effective. “They’d say, ‘Make lagomorphs en masse. gracious,” he recalls. “But what I was sure you fly over that politically powerful saying didn’t seem to have any immediate rancher’s house so he knows we’re out there “Wildlife Services bears the burden of relevance to them.” doing our job and will funnel state money to proof to justify the indiscriminate killing of the agency,’ ” Sanders recalls. predators — economically, ecologically and Among the few trappers who incorporated ethically,” Crabtree says. “I’ll go to my grave Shivik’s research was Rick Williamson, the Former Nevada Wildlife Services Director saying that.” agency’s longtime Idaho wolf specialist. In Robert Beach backs that claim in a 2008 2000, Shivik began supplying Williamson affidavit: “One of the first things I was told The next day, I drive up a long hill with radio-activated guard boxes that erupt by the Sheepmen when I arrived … was overlooking the nearby town of Logan to visit with disturbing noises — shattering glass, that they could have me removed in a John Shivik, the Predator Research Facility’s tumbling bowling pins — when a radio- heartbeat if I did not (sic) something they previous director. In 2014, five years after collared wolf approaches. Though the boxes felt jeopardized their livestock operations. he left Wildlife Services, Shivik published only worked on collared wolves, Williamson, … Mr. Paris told me on several occasions The Predator Paradox, a book that explores with the help of agency scientists, that he would have me removed if I tried to advances in nonlethal management. One discovered they effectively discouraged take (his trapper) away from him.” The Mr. needn’t read between the lines to detect his predation in small pastures. Yet few Paris in question, a sheep rancher, today frustration with his former employer. “Given trappers shared his interest. “The majority chairs Nevada’s Predatory Animal and bureaucratic realities … there is a certain felt like they had a full workload already,” Rodent Control Committee, which helps

ProjectCoyote.org PROMOTING COEXISTENCE BETWEEN PEOPLE & WILDLIFE THROUGH f PROJECT COYOTE o e s c t n er te EDUCATION, SCIENCE, & ADVOCACY P.O. BOX 5007, LARKSPUR, CA, 94977 ing coexis Wildlife Services and its eternal war on predators fund Wildlife Services’ -operations. 2014. “You’ll see producers coming out of directives hold little sway. What’s more, the the feed store with a one-ton pallet of dog agency doesn’t generally view nonlethal The cooperator model may also explain food on a forklift.” When the Office of the management as its duty. “We get asked all why the battering ram of public outrage Inspector General audited Wildlife Services the time, ‘Why doesn’t Wildlife Services use has scarcely dented the agency. If you’re last year, investigators observed nonlethal nonlethal more?’ ” says Stewart Breck, a reading this article in San Francisco techniques on every ranch. biologist at the National Wildlife Research or Seattle, you’re not an influential Center. “Part of the answer is that we constituent, no matter how many petitions What’s more, the agency has taken some do, and people don’t know about it. And you sign. Environmentalists who want to steps in response to Shivik’s primary part is a paradigm that says it’s not the reform the agency, Shivik says, delighting in criticism — that nonlethal research doesn’t responsibility of Wildlife Services to use the heresy, shouldn’t fight to slash Wildlife percolate from scientists to specialists. In those tools. Specialists may recommend Services’ federal funding — they should 2009, Wildlife Services promoted Michael them, but it’s up to the livestock owner to double it, making it fully accountable to Marlow, a biologist and ex-trapper, to implement them.” taxpayers. “All stakeholders are created serve as liaison between researchers, equal,” he adds as the last glimmers of sun trappers and livestock producers. Marlow’s Need help killing the coyotes menacing your fall on the distant Bear River Range. “But networking has paid dividends: A tip he lambs? We’ll put out traps. Want to erect an some stakeholders are more equal than gleaned at an American Sheep Industry electric fence? We’ll offer advice, but the others.” conference, for instance, led to Julie Young’s wire’s coming from your wallet. European guard dog project. “We talk Wildlife Services’ fealty to its cooperators about being in contact with livestock more, Officials claim they lack capacity to deploy frustrates critics. But it comes with a altering pasture schedules, using scare nonlethal measures on a large scale. “It promising corollary: If ranchers buy into techniques,” Marlow says in an Oklahoma would be expensive and impractical to have nonlethal management, specialists may drawl. “Across the board, we’ve seen people our limited numbers of Wildlife Services follow suit. interested in learning how to better protect experts dedicated to daily implementation,” their livelihood.” wrote Suckow and Clark. But killing takes Many producers already appear to be money and manpower, too: In 2014, Idaho coming around, in some cases nudged by Wildlife Services has also stepped up its paid Wildlife Services $140,000 to gun predator-friendly groups like Defenders of education efforts. That’s especially true in down 31 wolves — $4,600 per wolf. Zack Wildlife. According to USDA surveys, 58 Montana, where in January 2015, Steuber Strong, wildlife advocate at the Natural percent of sheep ranchers now employ launched a series of workshops at which Resources Defense Council, sees that some form of nonlethal deterrence, ranchers, conservationists and scientists disconnect as illogical. “More producers are compared to 32 percent in 2004. “We recommend nonlethal tools, from fencing beginning to ask, ‘Why shouldn’t Wildlife fence, we have herders, we have guard off chicken coops to safely discarding Services help us prevent conflicts from dogs, we have sheds for lambs,” says John cow carcasses. A half-dozen other states, happening in the first place?’ ” Baucus, a Helena-based rancher who including Oregon and Idaho, have also serves on the American Sheep Industry’s held workshops, and Utah, Nevada and The agency has begun taking hesitant Predator Management Committee and Washington will soon stage their own steps in Montana, where Wildlife Services is the brother of former Montana Sen. conferences. and NRDC will soon split costs for around Max Baucus. “We’ve been working $13,000-worth of so-called “turbo fladry,” with predators for a long time, and we For all its consulting and outreach work, flags attached to electrified fences. “People understand what’s required.” however, the agency’s fundamental are starting to grasp that predators are approach remains unchanged. Though here to stay, and we gotta figure out how In Montana, the agency appears to be Wildlife Services’ directives advise to deal with them,” says Bryan Ulring, following ranchers’ lead. According to specialists to recommend nonlethal owner of Yellowstone Grassfed Beef, who state director John Steuber, specialists methods first, the instructions aren’t attended one of Steuber’s workshops in recommended guard dogs 1,655 times in requirements, and former trappers say the Dillon. Ulring uses range riders to protect

ProjectCoyote.org PROMOTING COEXISTENCE BETWEEN PEOPLE & WILDLIFE THROUGH f PROJECT COYOTE o e s c t n er te EDUCATION, SCIENCE, & ADVOCACY P.O. BOX 5007, LARKSPUR, CA, 94977 ing coexis Wildlife Services and its eternal war on predators his own Centennial Valley herd. “Sometimes that’s going to mean lethal. But I don’t think anybody wants to spend $5,000 to kill a wolf with a helicopter when there are better ways of doing things.”

An unlit broom closet tucked inside a Petaluma, California, airplane hanger seems like a strange place to observe those better ways. Yet that’s where I find myself one steamy afternoon, surrounded by the dim outlines of mops and boxes. Windex tingles in the air. The only light emanates from a yellow cylinder, a bit chunkier than a thermos, which flashes white, then blue, then red. Some bursts are strobe-like, others, long, lighthouse-style beams.

This is a FoxLight, invented by an Australian sheep rancher. “The lights are random, so it’s harder for predators to habituate to it,” Keli Hendricks says from the darkness. “You set this out in a field during lambing season, and coyotes think it’s people out there.”

Hendricks, an amiable rancher with a curtain of blond hair, raises around 300 cows down the road from the airplane hangar, which sits on her father’s ranch and vineyard. She despises the wanton predator killing endemic to her industry, and she forbids it on her ranch. “Our cows calve in pastures with coyote packs,” she says her an outlier in Wyoming, but it’s less Services’ bonnet. as we depart the closet. “Coyotes eat the remarkable in Marin County, a liberal, afterbirth and leave. We don’t shoot ’em and affluent community just across the Golden Carnivore advocacy comes naturally to Fox, we don’t trap ’em. I’m not saying we never Gate Bridge from San Francisco. More a slim, laser-focused woman whose father, have problems, but they’re rare.” Granted, than 15 years ago, Marin expelled Wildlife Michael, studied canids at Washington cows are far less vulnerable to coyotes than Services and implemented a nonlethal University in St. Louis. Camilla grew up sheep. Still, fire a few warning shots over approach to deterring coyotes, a campaign alongside an orphaned wolf named Tiny, coyotes’ heads, and Hendricks says you led by an activist named, appropriately, which had imprinted on her father. (She’s can almost train them. The well-behaved Camilla Fox. Today, Fox, with help from reluctant to share that detail for fear it will resident packs keep out troublesome Hendricks and other volunteers, runs encourage others to make pets of wild transients — the “guard coyote” dynamic Project Coyote, a Larkspur-based nonprofit predators.) Michael fed the wolf roadkill he hypothesized by John Shivik. devoted to human-carnivore coexistence peeled off the streets himself. “Tiny was the most intelligent, conscientious, sensitive Hendricks’ gentle approach would make — and one of the noisiest bees in Wildlife

ProjectCoyote.org PROMOTING COEXISTENCE BETWEEN PEOPLE & WILDLIFE THROUGH f PROJECT COYOTE o e s c t n er te EDUCATION, SCIENCE, & ADVOCACY P.O. BOX 5007, LARKSPUR, CA, 94977 ing coexis Wildlife Services and its eternal war on predators being I have ever been around,” Fox tells me advocates; indeed, he helped author it. Two recent court cases suggest the lawsuit inside the echoing hangar. Today, his fields are crisscrossed by county- may succeed. In July 2015, an appeals funded electric fences, which helped Jensen court ruled that the conservation group Wildlife Services, however, has fought to limit predation to just six sheep last year, WildEarth Guardians had standing to prevent Marin’s model from spreading. Soon a fraction of his historic losses. But the challenge lethal activities in Nevada, after the program launched, Carlsen was fences require constant upkeep: Trees fall where it had sued the agency for relying attending California’s annual agricultural on them, floods wash them out, pampas on outdated science. And in December, a commissioners conference when he made grass engulfs them. So Jensen keeps a .22- judge barred Wildlife Services from killing an unpleasant discovery: Wildlife Services 250 varmint rifle in his truck. He estimates wolves in Washington without preparing had used his data — inaccurately, Carlsen he killed 35 coyotes in 2015. a full environmental impact statement, says — to distribute reports detailing how deeming that experts have “significant much money other California counties “Nonlethal is the term that makes it disagreement” about whether lethal stood to lose if they followed Marin’s lead. “I palatable,” Jensen says as we rumble past removal works. thought that was about the lowest thing they two dappled lambs nudging at their mother. could do,” he says. “But all it’s changed is who kills the coyotes. That Wildlife Services has sought to I’m tired of being pointed at as the model for discredit Marin’s model rather than learn More than a decade later, the agency’s everyone. This is just another idea.” from it is, Fox believes, proof that the opinion of Marin remains unchanged. agency hasn’t truly embraced nonlethal When Wildlife Services published a draft Jensen contends that escalating methods. “Wildlife Services has done environmental assessment evaluating its depredation has pushed some sheepmen everything it can to make sure other Idaho operations in July 2015, it rejected out of business and compelled others to counties don’t sever their contracts,” a Marin-style option as impractical convert to cows. Budget cuts have forced Fox says. “We are such a target.” and ineffective. The agency based this Carlsen to cease compensating ranchers dismissal entirely on a 2006 analysis by for slain sheep, an initial feature of the In December, I travel to the Hopland Stephanie Larson, director of the University program. Even so, agricultural reports state Research and Extension Center, a University of California’s Sonoma County extension that Marin’s sheep industry has grown by of California field station tucked in 5,300 office, which suggested that Marin’s 2,500 head since 1999. Nearby Mendocino acres of Mendocino woodland, to see a conversion to nonlethal management led County, which retained its trapper, has lost Wildlife Services workshop in action. to more dead coyotes. “Taxpayer dollars 6,000 sheep. aren’t being used to manage coyotes, Though the mood is amicable enough, a but ranchers are shooting whatever they Yet despite pressure from Project Coyote glance around the room reveals entrenched see,” Larson claims. Dissenting wildlife and other animal groups, California battle lines. Trappers in Carhartts congregate biologists, however, point out that counties have been slow to follow Marin’s on the left side, while activists, Keli Hendricks Larson’s paper lacks listed sources for its lead. The city of Davis terminated its Wildlife among them, cluster to starboard. A parade coyote estimates and makes the dubious Services contract after a trapper triggered of Wildlife Services scientists — Michael assumption that ranchers rarely killed public outrage by killing five coyotes on a Marlow, Stewart Breck, Julie Young — detail predators before losing their trapper. golf course in 2012, and Sonoma County their research. “I can think of people who hate defected in 2013. But other dominoes the fact that I work for the agency I work for,” Still, no two ranches are alike, and haven’t toppled. Humboldt and Mendocino Young says at the end of her presentation. techniques that deter coyotes in Barinaga’s Counties suspended their contracts, but “But 90 percent of what we’re trying to do is tight pastures might prove less manageable ultimately opted to renew. Mendocino’s the exact same thing.” in the sprawling meadows grazed by contract remains in jeopardy: The county ranchers like Bill Jensen. For years, Jensen, now faces a lawsuit from wildlife groups There’s some truth to that: Camilla Fox a fourth-generation sheepman whose 500 for failing to evaluate Wildlife Services’ preaches the gospel of FoxLights; Young acres overlook Tomales Bay, ranked among environmental impact before re-upping. has a FoxLight sitting in her facility. Guard the Marin program’s most outspoken animals are a pillar of the Marin program

ProjectCoyote.org PROMOTING COEXISTENCE BETWEEN PEOPLE & WILDLIFE THROUGH f PROJECT COYOTE o e s c t n er te EDUCATION, SCIENCE, & ADVOCACY P.O. BOX 5007, LARKSPUR, CA, 94977 ing coexis Wildlife Services and its eternal war on predators that Fox champions; Young studies the Wildlife Services’ foes often point out Furlong, whose position was partly funded efficacy of new breeds. Where the agency the hypocrisy of conservative producers by by Wildlife Services until Sonoma and its detractors differ is in the application demanding federal aid when carnivores dropped its contract, also moonlights as a of those techniques — should nonlethal be come calling. As Predator Defense’s Brooks rancher in Marin County. At an agricultural the foundation of a predator management Fahy asks: “Why should we subsidize sheep meeting nearly a year back, Camilla Fox regime that kills only as last resort, or a ranchers and not, say, plumbers?” It’s a had asked the room whether anyone might tool on the same shelf as airplanes and fair question, one that Fahy used in 2005 be willing to try out FoxLights. Furlong, the cyanide? How acceptable should it be to to convince Oregon’s Lane County to end trapper, was the sole volunteer. Ravens slaughter coyotes? Each answer requires its predator control contract. Then again, hammered his new lambs, but Canis latrans cracking open another question: Who sustaining ranching, at least on some mostly left him alone, though he still snared belongs on the land, and for what purpose? private lands, provides a bulwark against a few that tried to breach his pasture. How much risk should ranchers accept? the tide of subdivision — the classic “cows, “Coyotes will habituate to anything,” What is a coyote’s life worth –– or a not condos” argument. Wildlife Services’ Furlong says; he’s worked with ranchers who sheep’s? Who pays, in the end? prioritization of M-44s and aerial gunning keep 22 guard dogs and suffer predation may contravene national sentiment and nevertheless. “But if it helps for two weeks Those philosophical nested dolls have available science, but preventing conflicts during lambing season, it’s worth it.” ecological and economic answers. But between the wild animals we worship and wildlife management is also a cultural the domestic ones we eat qualifies, in some Back at the grassy parking lot, Fauna dilemma, one whose spiritual and ethical cases, as the public interest. The need for Tomlinson, a Project Coyote volunteer, facets frequently supersede technical reform runs deep, but a Wildlife Services hands Furlong two FoxLights still enclosed ones. Many ranchers feel a moral obligation that kills as a last resort rather than a reflex, in packaging. He’s recommended the to defend their stock by any means and that first and foremost distributed devices to his producers, and decided to necessary; for their part, animal activists guard dogs and fladry and alarm boxes — buy more himself. Tomlinson claps her see inflicting superfluous suffering upon the techniques that its own researchers hands in delight. “We’re going to save individual carnivores as profoundly wrong. have devoted their lives to developing — some animals,” she cheers. Furlong smiles Today, too, many Westerners regard lethal could be a valuable agency indeed. tolerantly and stows the FoxLights in his management as an agrarian relic, one that truck as the light fades over Mendocino no longer reflects the region’s urbanized, After the workshop, a small cohort of County. In the hills, coyotes prepare to hunt, recreation-oriented reality. As land changes ranchers, activists and trappers wander up the chorus silent, for now. hands, as “best and highest use” swings to a 28-acre pasture, a field where Camilla from sheep and cows toward hiking and Fox had proposed a series of FoxLight trials. Correspondent Ben Goldfarb writes about conservation, the very meaning of wildlife Sunset bathes the hills; ungulate pellets wildlife from New Haven, Connecticut. evolves as well. Once, predators signified squish underfoot. “Sheep tend to sleep in @ben_a_goldfarb an impediment to making a living. Now vast the highest spot in the pasture,” says Jeff segments of the public believe they’re one Furlong, Sonoma County’s trapper, pointing of the things worth living for — an evolution to a clearing. “You could put the light up that has yet to permeate Wildlife Services’ here and get it as close as possible.” cost-benefit analyses.

ProjectCoyote.org PROMOTING COEXISTENCE BETWEEN PEOPLE & WILDLIFE THROUGH f PROJECT COYOTE o e s c t n er te EDUCATION, SCIENCE, & ADVOCACY P.O. BOX 5007, LARKSPUR, CA, 94977 ing coexis