By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Published: July 17, 2013
“There is a unit within the Agriculture Department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service called Wildlife Services. Its official mission, according to its Web site, is “to resolve wildlife conflicts to allow people and wildlife to coexist.” This has meant, since 2000, some two million dead animals. The list includes coyotes, beavers, mountain lions, black bears and innumerable birds. The agency’s real mission? To make life safer for livestock and game species.
There will obviously be times when livestock and predators come into conflict, when coyotes kill lambs and black bears become too accustomed to humans and cause genuine harm. But Wildlife Services’ lethal damage is broad and secretive, according to a series in The Sacramento Bee last year. The techniques are old-fashioned — steel traps and cyanide cartridges — and the result, according to a new study in the journal Conservation Letters, is a program that is wasteful, destructive to the balance of ecosystems and, ultimately, ineffective.
Under one name or another — for years it was part of the Interior Department — the agency has been doing its work as quietly as possible, though not without protest from Congress, scientists and members of the public who got wind of what was going on. Two House members — John Campbell, a California Republican; and Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat — have pressed for Congressional hearings and have asked the Agriculture Department’s inspector general to investigate Wildlife Services.
The agency, opponents say, has not scientifically evaluated the consequences of its actions and has consistently understated the damage it does to “nontarget” species, like songbirds. Its work also undercuts other programs intended to protect the balance of natural ecosystems.
It is time the public got a clear picture of what Wildlife Services is up to, and time for the Department of Agriculture to bring the agency’s work into accord with sound biological practices. Resolving wildlife conflicts need not involve indiscriminate killing.”
**Special thanks to “The Editorial Board” for providing this information (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/opinion/agricultures-misnamed-agency.html)
The Wolf Preservation Blog 
What the hell do you expect from a government organization, it has to bow to its political masters who in turn have to bow to big business.
Regards Oliver Craig
While I agree that big business has the big money, it is individual taxpaying, everyday citizens that steps into the voting booth. I hope we as a country wake up and start letting our members of Congress, as well as the new Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell, AND the director of USFWS, Dan Ashe, know we do not support the indiscriminate killing this rouge agency continues to conduct every day of every week of every year. I would also encourage people to contact President Obama and let him know that in addition to committing to protecting African wildlife, he starts protecting our own wildlife. And yes, of course I want Africa’s wildlife protected. That is not the point.