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I recently came across an essay about government sanctioned animal slaughter that sickened me. Not that I was surprised, as I already knew that government employees working for Wildlife Services are responsible for killing an incredible number of animals whom they call "pests", millions a year. (also see and) More of the gory details are contained in reports by Camilla Fox, founder of Project Coyote, and Wendy-Keefover-Ring who works for Wild Earth Guardians. As Ms. Keefover-Ring notes, there truly is a war on wildlife supported by our tax dollars, and the number of different animals killed is sickening and simply unnacceptable. And, to top it off, there also is massive collateral damage among non-targeted animals, including companion animals, all in the name of pest and predator control. Needless to say, death for the targeted animals does not come easy, but the reality of the animals' suffering and slow death usually is brushed off. "A quiet and apparent painless death normally occurs 1-3 days following ingestion," wrote a spokesman for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), a branch of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) responsible for this horrific and reprehensible genocide (Wildlife Services is a branch of APHIS). A "quiet and apparent painless death" for whom, surely not the animals who are poisoned, trapped, shot at, snared, chased down to exhaustion, electrocuted, or drowned. (see and)
Not only are millions of animals ruthlessly slaughtered using incredibly inhumane methods, but entire ecosystems are also decimated. For example, in 2009 "Illinois wildlife officials poisoned 90 tons of goldfish, gizzard and shad in the Chicago Sanitary and Shipping Canal with the chemical Rotenone, which suffocates fish, to support the sport fishing industry. A year earlier they poisoned tens of thousands of goldfish, koi, bass, crappie, catfish and sunfish/bluegill hybrids in Chicago's Lincoln Park to rehab the pond."
Please write to your local and federal government officials and ask them to stop the unrelenting and indiscriminate slaughter of animals with whom we must coexist. Surely there are better and more humane ways to handle "problem" animals and that don't involve a total lack of regard for their well-being.
