From: wheeler@SUPER.ORG (Ferrell S. Wheeler)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals
Subject: Eye for an Eye
Date: 3 Sep 92 15:26:32 GMT


[The following article is on wildlife destruction on public lands in the
 west by ranching interests including the ADC.  For more information,
 clarifications or references contact the organizations listed at the
 end of the article.   Long post: 415 lines.]

Reprinted with permission from:
  The Animals' Voice Magazine
  PO Box 341347
  Los Angeles, CA  90034
  (800) 82-VOICE


    Near the Border of Insanities
    For here now, lies only the rubble of history;
          here now we wait as broken cities under a
    grazing flock of stars, here and here now
          our brilliant tears have dropped to
    splash brave oil-pools that are lost
          in a darkening world ...

AN EYE FOR AN EYE: Killing Wildlife for Revenge

Main Text by Lynn Jacobs with an Introduction and Epilogue by Jack Olsen


   "It was a well-planned military maneuver:  They came in pickups, armed
with short-wave radios, powerful engines, clinging snow tires ... each
nervously fingering a high-powered rifle with telescopic sights.
   "At the next section line 12 men awaited his approach.  At 100 yards
head-on, it began.  His faltering speed spared him as bullets churned the
snow ahead.  As he reached the ditch he sank shoulder deep and floundered desperately.  Astonished, ashamed or empty, no one fired.  As he struggled
across the road and into the next section he seemed to crawl.  As if he
were shielded, 30 or more rounds left him untouched.  In a weedy draw he
could run no further.  In cover no more than 12 inches high, he disappeared.
   "The plane circled and then the men closed in afoot.  Talk of letting
this one go passed idly.  Twenty-five armed men closed in on a terrified,
exhausted animal.  The enclosed area dwindled to the size of a football
field and less.  Still, no coyote.  Some, relieved, hoped he had escaped.
   "Then he appeared, staggering, worn, mouth agape.  He weaved pitifully
up the hill as if defying death, or seeking it.
   "Then man, the rational animal, the pinnacle of evolution, the great
humanitarian, gunned him down.
   "There was little back-slapping.  Just a sickening, nauseating silence.
The day ended.  With it ended my coyote hunting."

   -- John Farrar, _Autobiography of a Hunter_


INTRODUCTION

   Who wants to prosecute somebody for killing coyotes?  Hardly anyone in
sheeprich Texas.  And hardly anyone in Arizona or Nevada or Oregon or any
of the western states, where poison guns lie in wait for coyotes and other
animals including those of the human variety.
   I'm not talking about the DDT, parathion, mercury compounds, and other
pesticides and fungicides and herbicides with which overzealous
industrialists, agriculturists, exterminators, and ordinary citizens are
poisoning the earth.  I'm talking about poisons used specifically and
purposefully to kill animals.  These include the cyanide that is found in
coyote getters, the arsenic that is put out in honey buckets, the thallium
that is impregnated into bait carcasses, the strychnine that is encased in
sugar-pill coatings and the miracle poison known chemically as sodium
flouroacetate and commercially as "1080", a pinch of which is toxic enough
to send several dozen adult humans into writhing, convulsive deaths.
   Those who have helped draw this carapace of poison -- dropped from airplanes,
trail bikes, and tough pickups onto every corner of the western range -- point
out apologetically that the chemical extermination of wild animals, especially
predators, is an American tradition.  In the last decades of the nineteenth
century, grizzzlies and wolves and coyotes -- as well as dozens of smaller
species -- have been poisoned by the hundreds of thousands.  There is ample
evidence that the combination of stockmen and federal poisoners has already
succeeded in wiping out certain animal populations and endangering others ...



   Presently, 70% of the eleven western states -- Washington, Oregon,
California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and
New Mexico -- is being grazed by the livestock industry.  That's seven out
of every ten acres behind barbed wire fences with cattle and/or sheep on
them.  Think about that.  And remember: this ten-acre figure includes dense
forests and brushlands, the driest deserts, sand dunes, dry lake beds and
salt flats, lava flows and cinder cones, cliffs and mountaintops, cities and
towns, roads and parking areas, airports, golf courses, your backyard, and
every other place that cannot be grazed.  In other words, almost every place
that can be grazed, is grazed.
   And these eleven western states contain over 90% of all federal lands
outside Alaska.
   On most rangelands, cattle eat most of the forage (grass and herbage
cover) and a good amount of the browse.  In fact, cattle alone eat a much
greater percentage of the total amount of forage and browse on western
rangelands than do all native grazing and browsing animals combined.
   Then come the "range improvements."  The most noticable of these so-
called improvements to most of us is the ever-present barbed wire fence.
There are literally hundreds of thousands of miles of them on public lands,
almost every mile of which need not exist other than as accommodation to
the grazing industry.  A major problem with fences is that they help prevent
migration and restrict the free movement of many wild animals, thus shrinking
their territories and limiting access to necessary food, water, mating and
hibernating areas.  Pronghorns and bighorns are especially susceptible to
being "trapped" and confined by fences, sometimes dying of starvation during
hard winters.  Fences on public lands also kill and maim many wild animals
each year.  Deer and elk become entangled and die in them, as do pronghorns,
moose, coyotes, foxes, and many other animals, often dying slow and lingering
deaths.
   Once these lands have been "improved," they must be "managed."  Unwanted
vegetation (almost anything that isn't grass) is "treated" by burning,
spraying with dangerous herbicides, bulldozing, plowing, disking, harrowing,
mowing, grubbing, girdling, railing, and just plain cutting and hacking
away with chainsaws, axes, machettes, brush hooks, hatchets, pruning shears,
switchblades, pocket knives, and potato peelers.  There are machines that
crush, chop, mow, beat, shred, cut, and otherwise destroy "unwanted"
vegetation.  Even flame throwers are sanctioned weapons in these brutal
battles of botanical extermination and manipulation -- to burn spines off
prickly pear cacti so they may be eaten by the ever-hungry cattle.
   At any rate, the offending plants must be eradicated by any means
necessary.  And the results of all this mayhem and devastation are entirely
predictable: lost topsoil, destroyed wildlife habitat, dead animals, water-
shed destruction, and pollution.
   In the eyes of graziers, basically there are three requirements for an
acceptable environment -- grass, water, and livestock to eat and drink them.
All else is questionable, if not expendable, a possible hindrance to profit
and power.  In nature, most animals are basically either vegetarians (which become "competitors" to livestock if they eat forage or browse) or carnivores
(which become "predators" to livestock if they are large enough to kill a sheep or calf).  The mass slaughter carried out on our public lands for the sake
of privately owned, domestic grazing animals has been an incredibly brutal,
bloody affair, which continues today all over the West.
   Though livestock may die from any number of causes, if the cause is
unknown, stockmen usually blame predators.  Very few predator kills are
actually seen by people.  Yet, when a rancher discovers a coyote, bear,
or eagle feeding on a sheep carcass, he commonly assumes it was killed by
the predator, though there is a good chance the sheep died from disease,
infection, exposure, poisonous plants, or a gunshot wound from a disgruntled
hunter. In one study, professional autopsies showed that only 10% of the
dead livestock studied were actually killed by predators.
   More than anything, Western cowboys are famous for their guns -- their
"most faithful companions."  In the grazing industry's formative years,
predators were shot whenever they were seen.  Even today most ranchers
carry rifles in their pickup trucks and many shoot at every predator and
stray dog they see (if they aren't able to run over them first).  Many hunt
predators with trained dogs or hire others to do so.  The animal is tracked
down, cornered or treed, and shot.  Some lure and shoot predators using
special calls that sound like prey in distress or like animals seeking
others of their species.  Some use scent lures.  Little of this slaughter
has much to do with livestock protection, but is done "on principle," "for
sport," or because, as Champ Clark writes in _The Badlands_, "killing varmints
helps ease frustrations."
   Most Western state government predator "control" agents have gunned down
millions of large predators since the early 1900s, including many thousands
of stray dogs.  With the ban on many predator poisons in 1972, they have
stepped up the shooting spree, often using helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft.
Typically, aerial predator "control" agents and sportsmen chase coyotes
until they drop from exhaustion or roll over and expose their vulnerable
underparts in a canine plea for mercy.  Or coyotes are lured into the open
with helicopter or truck placements of "bait draws."  Then they are shot
with 12-gauge shotguns or high-powered rifles.  These aerial killers are
especially deadly in winter, when snow is deep and predators have few places
to hide.  Many wealthy public ranchers think it great sport to spend the
weekend shooting coyotes from their own private aircraft.  At least one
third of animals shot do not die immediately.  Many wounded animals live
out their days in agony, dying slowly from infection or starvation.  Others
are crippled for life.  Commonly seen on the Western range are coyotes and
other predators with legs, jaws, and other body parts shot off.
   Ranchers and government predator "control" agents still use leghold traps
extensively, while stockmen discreetly encourage, assist, and/or hire private
trappers to kill predators on private and public lands.  Although western
state laws require trappers to check their traps at regular intervals, often
every day, most trappers leave their traps unattended for days.  According
to several government trappers, leghold traps are checked an average of twice
a week, or "at the trappers' convenience," often only on weekends.  Thus,
trapped animals suffer and frequently die from exposure, thirst, starvation,
or attacks from predators, but some survive, and consequently many three-
legged coyotes, bobcats, deer, and other animals hobble about in the wild.
   When the trapper finally does come by, the animal may suffer more severe
pain.  Wild animals usually don't die easily, and many are stoned to death
or succumb to multiple wounds from a gun, shovel, or club.
   In livestock areas, traps are most commonly set for coyotes, mountain
lions, bobcats, and bears.  But traps are indiscriminate.  Any animal
attracted to the bait or happening by may fall victim.  In fact, most
reliable studies and expert testimony have shown that between 2/3 and 3/4
of animals trapped are "non-target" species.  Casualties include many deer,
wolverines, martins, badgers, beaver, opossums, porcupines, raccoons, skunks,
rabbits, ringtails, javelina, armadillos, groundhogs, humans, eagles, hawks,
owls, vultures, crows, ravens, magpies, wild turkeys, quail, songbirds,
kingfishers, tortoises, domestic dogs (frequently) and cats, domestic live-
stock (!), and others too numerous to list.  The federal Animal Damage
Control (ADC) Department reported "inadvertently" killing 555 badgers, 1,117
raccoons, and 764 javelina in 1988 (numbers of unreported victims are
undoubtedly much higher).  Says Dick Randall, a federal predator "control"
agent for 10 years, now working to protect wildlife, "my trap victims
included bald and golden eagles, a variety of hawks and other birds, rabbits,
sage grouse, pet dogs, deer and antelope, badgers, porcupines, sheep and cows."
   Poisons, however, are still the cheapest way to kill large numbers of
predators.  During the early years of Western ranching, the predator "control"
arsenal acquired various deadly poisons -- arsenic, strychnine, sodium
cyanide, and others.  These were inserted into bait, usually meat or
carcasses of cattle, sheep, deer and other foods favored by predators.
   The 1940s ushered in a whole new era of predator eradication with the
introduction of the extremely lethal toxicants thallium sulfate and sodium
monofluoroacetate (Compound 1080, or "1080") -- developed in Germany during
World War II.  They replaced many of the older poisons and soon became widely
popular.
   Also introduced in the 1940s was a revolutionary, deadly new predator
weapon.  The "coyote getter" is a pistol cartridge-powered cyanide gun that
shoots a puff of deadly sodium cyanide dust into the mouth of any carnivore,
omnivore, or carrion-eater that tugs on its scented wick.  On contact with
the moisture in the animal's mouth (or eyes, or wherever it hits) gas is
released and the animal is gassed to death (or blinded).  A highly effective
killer, the coyote getter quickly gained widespread use.  Eventually it was
usurped by a newer model, the spring loaded "M-44" coyote getter, which is
stilled used today.  Over the years coyote getters have killed countless
thousands of predators, non-target animals, and even a few humans.
   During the 1950s and 1960s, poisons became the rangeland rage.  Contam-
inated livestock carcasses were routinely left on grazed land across the
West.  Meat baits tainted with 1080 were placed at six-mile intervals in
huge grid patterns over vast areas.  From trucks, horses, trail bikes, and
airplanes, millions of strychnine-laced tallow pellets were scattered over
the Western landscape, even where no livestock grazed.  In 1970, the Division
of Wildlife Services alone set out 10,800 Compound 1080 baits, 805,000
strychnine baits, and 32,933 coyote getters.  According to government
calculated toxic kill pattrerns, just these 1080 baits alone were estimated
to be sufficient to poison 248,832,000 acres for coyote "control" -- an
area 2.5 times the size of California.  Other federal agencies, states,
counties, and ranchers waged their own, even more secretive poison wars.
   These deadly poisons took their toll on much more than predators.  Wildlife
experts estimate that more than 2/3 of poison kills are non-target animals.
Of course, to a large degree, results depend on the skill of the handler,
and some poisons are more specific than others.  But relatively speaking,
most predator poisons are indiscriminate.  And most were over-applied
irresponsibly and often illegally.
   Millions of non-target animals have been killed, including scavengers
such as crows, ravens, jays, magpies, eagles, hawks, badgers, weasels, mink,
raccoons, ground squirrels, bears, dogs (including sheep dogs) and cats,
and any other animal attracted to dead meat.  For example, poisons, traps,
and degradation of habitat by livestock were chiefly responsible for
extirpating the wolverine from more than 2/3 of its native range.
   Opposition to range poisons grew during the 1960s and early 1970s,
chiefly as part of the growing environmental movement.  Thallium sulfate,
nonspecific and slow to kill, was finally banned in 1967.  Predator
exterminators turned to 1080.  But 1080 is little better.  According to
one source, "The symptoms of 1080 poisoning appear in from 30 minutes to
two hours and are characterized by severe convulsions.  Death ensues in
two to three hours and there is no known antidote."  Less than 1/500 of
an ounce will kill a grown human.  So potent is 1080 that, like DDT, it
can kill as many as five animals in a bioaccumulative chain reaction.
Finally in 1972, after the highly publicized 1080 deaths of many eagles
in Wyoming, President Nixon signed an executive order halting the use of
all poisons to kill predators on federal land.  Unfortunately, rancher
Ronald Reagan eagerly rescinded the order in 1982, reinstating the use of
sodium cyanide and 1080 in sheep collars -- a "trial balloon" for 1080.
The grazing industry is the main force behind the effort to bring 1080 back
into general use, and under a sympathetic George Bush this may soon be the
case.
   Poison advocates argue that toxins are a humane alternative for killing
predators.  Yet often predators and, especially, non-target victims, don't
eat enough poison to die "quickly" and instead suffer for hours, days, or
weeks.  They may wander the landscape in torment or writhe on the ground,
wracked by pain, gradually dying.  Even under the best of circumstances,
most poisons cause agonizing pain before death.
   Another method of killing predators is "denning."  The object of denning
is to kill predator young, usually coyote pups, sometimes foxes, wolves,
mountain lions, bobcats, or others, in their dens.  There are dozens of
forms of denning, all of them gruesome.  If possible, the denner simply
digs back into the den and strangles the young barehanded, shoots them, or
kills them with any implement at his disposal.  In another form, a piece of
barbed wire is shoved into the back of the den and rotated until it catches
on a pup's or kitten's fur.  Or a hook may be used.  The youngster is then
"fished" out and shot or its head is bashed in.  In another form of denning,
the inside of the den is turned into a blazing inferno with a flamethrower,
or involves smoking the animals out with a smoke bomb or fire and killing
the choking, blinded pups or kittens with a club or shovel.  In still another,
dry brush is packed into the den hole and set on fire, and the entrace is
covered with a rock.  In theory, the animals suffocate from the smoke, but,
as Dick Randall relates: "...they'd often end up scrambling for the cracks of
light at the entrace in desperation. You could hear them yowling when they
hit the flames.  They burned alive."

   Virtually all -- 19 out of 19 -- of the large mammals (and most of the
small mammals) that are (were) found in rangeland areas of the West have
been decimated by the livestock industry.  These mammals include grizzly
bears (which, though facing extinction in the U.S., are still shot by some
ranchers, illegally, on public lands -- and are extinct in California, the
state mammal), black bears, grey, red, swift, and kit foxes, coyotes (which
have been killed by the many millions, but continue to reproduce in large
numbers), grey wolves, jaguars (yes, jaguars!), lynx, bobcats, mountain
lions, moose, elk, pronghorns, bighorn sheep, mule and whitetail deer, and,
of course, the buffalo.  The grazing industry is quite possibly even more
to blame than loss of habitat for driving the California condor to near
extinction.
   Perhaps as important as any large herbivore to pre-livestock Western
grassland and semi-grassland was the prairie dog.  Belittled as a destructive
"pest" by ranchmen, in reality, it is (was) one of the industry's foremost competitors.  The rodents were a key food for countless millions of predators,
including coyotes, wolves, foxes, eagles, hawks, owls, badgers, bobcats and
snakes.  Their burrows aerated the soil, helped water infiltrate to lower
levels and conserve moisture, prepare seedbeeds, spread seeds, and create
a diversity of conditions, thereby increasing fire, biotic, and zoological
diversity and thus, ecosystem stability.  But all this ended with the live-
stock invasion.
   After World War II, the prairie dog "control" program became a lustful,
massive campaign of genocide against these peaceful creatures.  Billions of
gophers, squirrels, rabbits, mice, seed-eating birds, insects, and microbes
died along with the billions of prairie dogs in widespread poisoning cam-
paigns.  The black-footed ferret was so dependent upon prairie dogs that it
is now among the most endangered mammal species on Earth.  Tens of billions
of prairie dogs have been killed in the ranching industry's massive secret
war, but the massacre continues.  Because the industry controls nearly all
prairie dog habitat, prairie dog numbers remain miniscule (from original
populations of 5-10 billion), and the black-footed ferret faces extinction.
   The wild horse is another victim of this industry gone amok.  Since 1973,
about 100,000 horses and burros have been taken from the range and "adopted."
But, the adoption market is now saturated, and more than 10,000 animals are
being held in federal corrals (some for four years) where, according to many
sources, food, treatment and conditions in general are poor.  Rather than
reducing the number of cattle on public lands, the Bureau of Land Management
(or the Bureau of "Livestock" Management), has proposd that these "unadopt-
able" thousands be killed or auctioned off en masse.
   Thirty thousand stockmen are spread evenly across Western public lands,
and the vast majority of them kill predators, competitors, and other animals
they view as pests or no-goods -- with guns, traps, poisons, dogs, trucks,
boots, and whatever means available.  By now, you may wonder if there are
any wild animals that stockmen don't consider enemies, or treat like enemies.
Reportedly, there are:  aardvarks and penguins.
   All this avarice, arrogance, and dishonesty, overgrazing and land abuse,
and slaughtering of native animals should at the very least be enough to
make us want to put an end to it, especially considering that it's happening
on and to our public lands all over the western United States.  But one
overwhelming added insult has been subtly forced upon us without most of
us even being aware of it:  WE are actually financing much, if not most,
of this plunder of our natural heritage out of our own pocket.  The American
public is paying dearly to have its land overgrazed.  By exploiting public
fondness for cow meat and the American cowboy, presenting an unobtrusive,
harmless-looking public image, and exercising its overwhelming political
power at all levels of government, the livestock grazing industry has
managed to stick us with the bill.

       -- Lynn Jacobs, author of _Waste of the West: Public Lands Ranching_

EPILOGUE

   If scientists are correct -- if the land is indeed one organism and
there is a total and critical interdependence among all living things
-- then the deliberate poisoning of vast areas of the United States will
have been a long stride toward the end of life as it is known on the North
American continent.  The cold breath of extinction already blows across
dozens of our species, even as the final specimens take their last tottering
steps toward the deadly baits and traps that await them.
   Fueled by easy and inaccurate rationalizations, the campaign against the
coyote and other predators continues.  Brigades of government trappers and
divisions of private poisoners attack on every flank with poisons and guns
and gas and traps, and in the process, numberless carcasses of innocent
animals are left strewn about to destroy still other innocent animals.  Few
Americans even know that the war is going on, and most of those who know
about it watch helplessly, or ask one another nonchalantly: Does it really
matter if we kill all the coyotes, bears, lions, bobcats, wolves?
   Perhaps the question may not be answered to everyone's satisfaction
until the last wild beast is dead.  All over the world, humans are busily
annihilating animal species, but we have never learned how to create a
single one.  What then, if it turns out that men like the late Joseph Wood
Krutch were right?  Krutch said: "It is not a sentimental but a grimly
literal fact that unless we share this terrestrial globe with creatures
other than ourselves, we shall not be able to live on it for long."  Being
a practical people, we seem determined to test this thesis by practical
means, to shoot and poison, club and gas our wild animals, toxify our
environment, kill the pests and the fungi and the bugs, and reorder the
planet in our own image.
   Within a few decades, the last mountain lion will be gone.  Bears and
bobcats will hold out longer, because there are many moore of them, and
the wise and canny coyotes will outlast all the other large predators.  But
unless there are massive changes in the American West, unless the livestock
lobbies and the federal poisoners release their myths and prejudices, the
day will come when the last weak and sickened coyote will drag itself to
its feet  and lift its voice to the skies, and there will be no answer.
Then the graceful animal that Paul Maxwell called "the smartest and best
nature-balancer ever put on the face of this earth" will disappear into the
silence of eternity.
   We animals of the earth are a single family, and the death of one only
hurries the others toward the final patch of darkness.

      -- Jack Olsen, author of _Slaughter the Animals, Poison the Earth_

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more information on public lands ranching see Lynn Jacobs' book
_Waste of the West: Public Lands Ranching_ (1991) which can be ordered
from Lynn Jacobs (address below, $28).  It is 650 pages of meticulously
referenced material on every aspect of public lands ranching.  The
following entities work to eliminate or reform public lands ranching
they advocate more or less total abolition of federal lands grazing.
The last organization addresses the Animal Damage Control program.

Free Our Public Lands!
Lynn Jacobs (contact)
PO Box 5784
Tucson, AZ  85703
(602) 578-3173

Public Lands Action Network
PO Box S631
Santa Fe, NM  87502
(505) 984-1428

Ranching Task Force
Linda Wells (contact)
PO Box 41652
Tucson, AZ  85717
(602) 327-9973

Rest the West
Bruce Apple (contact)
PO Box 68345
Portland, OR  97268
(503) 645-6293, 653-9781

Wildlife Damage Review
PO Box 2541
Tucson, AZ  85702
(602) 882-4218
"Our goal is the elimination of the Animal Damage
Control program as it currently operates."

-------------------------------------
I am no longer blind.  -- Ferrell