Tuesday, February 7, 2006

Stanton: Aerial killing of coyotes that belong to public senseless

BILLIE STANTON

Tucson Citizen

With their stealthy slink and soulful serenades, coyotes lend a wild thrill and hint of mystery for most Tucson city slickers.

But for the rancher who awakens to find a calf slain overnight, the response is visceral. The mauled carcass represents more than a loss of money. It is a threat to the rancher's hard work, to the long and grueling days he endures to pay his mortgage, to feed his family. It is an insult to his very way of life.

So some southeastern Arizona ranchers summoned Wildlife Services recently, just as ranchers do nationwide, to destroy hundreds of coyotes by aerial gunning.

This is common practice for Wildlife Services, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that killed a record 2.7 million wild animals in 2004. From alligators to antelope, from coyotes to barn owls, Wildlife Services kills a wide range of species regularly - at taxpayer expense.

The impassioned outcry from animal activists is to be expected, but the practice also stirs criticism from scientists, biologists and ranchers whose attention to land management and animal husbandry precludes the need to kill wild predators.

Many ranchers have taken creative means to outfox the wily coyote. They move calves to safe and supervised sites, employ guard dogs or llamas to frighten predators away or install motion-detector lights on pens. Some time their calving seasons - which isn't always possible under federal grazing permits - to work around high-predation seasons. Such ranchers laud their proactive measures as highly successful.

But why go to such lengths? Because indiscriminate killing of coyotes ultimately doesn't work, as research has found for decades.

Coyotes have been under attack by the federal government since 1915. And when large numbers suddenly are slain, the species rebounds with a vengeance, breeding and producing more pups than before to compensate for the onslaught.

So the Wildlife Services practice has come under widespread criticism for myriad reasons. Why undertake a practice that may spare a few calves temporarily but ultimately will produce more coyotes than ever? Why do so at taxpayer expense? How can the government justify destroying wildlife on federal lands owned by all Americans? And, especially, why should taxpayers undertake this added expense for ranchers using federal grazing permits, which already are seen as a form of taxpayer subsidy?

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