Wildlife Services Predator Control

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The sole purpose of Wildlife Services predator control is to prevent commercial livestock losses from predation by wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, and other wild carnivores (NRDC, 2011). They work with state and local governments and use a combination of lethal control methods like trapping, poisoning, and gunning. There are many different types of trapping, poisoning, and gunning.
There are four main apparatuses used for trapping. Leghold traps are designed to catch the animal by the toes, foot, or leg, with a tightly gripping metal trap. The animal that is captured by this method suffers a great deal of injuries, exposure, hunger, and thirst. Conibear traps are a little bit more humane in the sense that they are designed to be a “quick kill” mechanism which crushes the animal to kill it. This type of trap is mainly used on water animals, but they have been found with pets caught in them and some still alive. Cage traps are a pretty common use in urban areas. The animal is drawn to the cage with some sort of bate and is unharmed (for the time being), most of the animals are killed and not released. Wildlife Services uses this method because of potential liability issues (NRDC, 2011).
Wildlife Services also uses the technique of gunning. The first technique is aerial gunning, in which predators are being shot down by use of a helicopter or fixed-wing aircrafts (NRDC, 2011). Shooting is a method that they use by calling an animal and then shooting it. This means, they use a call that sounds like prey and when that animal comes around looking for food, the Wildlife Services shoot it. Hunting dogs are used to track predators or they are used as “decoy dogs” to draw the predators in.
Compound 1080 is a tasteless, odorless, colorl...

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...and especially to the ecosystem with the killing of those animals and primarily the poisons that they use can totally destroy an ecosystem and do much more harm than good.
Wildlife Services predator control uses many methods and some of which are under review for change. Petitions have been made and many letters to the government and the company have been sent. Actions are being taken to reform this service for the better of ecosystems, livestock, predators, and humans.

Works Cited

http://www.bigwildlife.org/threats2.php http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/animals/wolves/predatorcontrol.asp http://www.predatordefense.org/USDA.htm http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/federal-governments-predator-control-program/ http://www.projectcoyote.org/newsreleases/news_notesfromfieldAug13.html
http://forcechange.com/69188/reform-wildlife-services-predator-control-program/

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