The USDA's Wildlife Services Exterminates Millions of Animals Each Year at the Behest of Capitalists

A Cougar Named KC at Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas

"Most of the public has no idea that a significant portion of the federal wildlife budget is actually devoted to extermination; animals that inconvenience humans become expendable 'varmints' that are then dispatched with stunning efficiency."

-- Jeff Ruch of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)

While both public and private groups work to preserve wild animals and their habitats, the United States Government is busy exterminating wildlife. For instance, in 2004 Wildlife Services, a division of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), exterminated more than 2.7 million wild animals. That equates to an astonishing five killings per minute and represents an increase of more than a million deaths over the previous year.

Animal deaths included 31,286 beavers, 3,236 opossums, 2,210 prairie dogs, 10,518 raccoons, and 1,673 rabbits and hares. Plus, 397 black bears, 359 cougars, 75,674 coyotes, 3,907 foxes, and 191 wolves were also exterminated. It was birds, however, who bore the brunt of Wildlife Services' wrath. For instance, 2.3 million starlings, 22,204 crows, ravens, and blackbirds, 76,874 pigeons and doves, 10,806 geese and swans, 72 wild turkeys, 15,508 sparrows, and 143 free-range chickens were eradicated.

The fascists and inveterate liars at the National Audubon Society, the American Bird Conservancy, National Wildlife, PETA, and National Geographic, all of which have called for the extermination of all feral cats because of their alleged predatory impact on birds, have been conspicuously silent on this subject. None of them have anything to say about the detrimental effect capitalism, pollution, and unchecked economic development has on avian species; according to these ailurophobes, only cats are to blame for avian mortality.

Two Wolves from Denali National Park in Alaska

Worst still, Wildlife Services is in the hip pocket of ranchers, farmers, and local municipalities who are the driving forces behind these free, taxpayer-paid exterminations. It is also important to remember that farmers already receive $21 billion a year in welfare from the federal government and ranchers are allowed to fatten their herds on government land for pennies.

Ninety per cent of these so-called nuisance animals are dispatched with poisons such as sodium cyanide and strychnine. The remainder are shot with guns from aircraft, killed in their dens, or succumb to agonizingly slow deaths in kill traps.

All of these barbaric methods also lead to the unintentional killing of non-target species. Zum Beispiel, poisons targeting starlings in cattle feedlots also claims the lives of owls, hawks, magpies, raccoons, and cats.

"Most of the public has no idea that a significant portion of the federal wildlife budget is actually devoted to extermination; animals that inconvenience humans become expendable 'varmints' that are then dispatched with stunning efficiency," Jeff Ruch of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) said in a September 8th press release. "With all of our unmet social and infrastructure needs, it is amazing that the federal government finances an entire fleet of aircraft for the purpose of hunting wildlife," he added.

Writing in the same press release, Wendy Keefover-Ring of the environmental group Sinapu labeled the toll exacted on ecosystems by Wildlife Services' killings as "jaw dropping."

Photos: spfdbus.com and wildnatureimages.com