The Forest Service has proposed new rules governing predator control -- aerial gunning, poison baits and traps, and the like -- in designated wilderness areas and research natural areas.
The new rules:
The Center for Biological Diversity is urging everyone who cares about wild animals and wild places to oppose this new rule change. This web page is designed to give you quick access to background documents that may help you understand and work to prevent this terrible rule from passing, and secure protection for wolves, coyotes, bears, foxes, bobcats and mountain lions wherever they roam.
What You Can Do
To sign onto the letter pasted below, send an email to
eryberg@biologicaldiversity.org with your contact
information, including a phone number.
Second, please consider writing your own comment
letter in addition to joining our sign-on letter.
Explain to the Forest Service why wilderness and
predators are important to you, and why you believe
they deserve complete protection from government
hunters and poison baits and traps. Comments must be
postmarked on or before August 7, 2006, and should be
addressed to:
Forest Service, USDA
Attn: Director, Wilderness and Wild Scenic Rivers
Resources
201 14th Street, SW
Washington, D.C. 20250
You may also email your comments to
PDM@fs.fed.us.
For more information please visit:
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/Programs/predator/control/index.html
This web page is designed to give you quick access to
background documents that may help you understand and
work to prevent this terrible rule from passing, and
secure protection for wolves, coyotes, bears, foxes,
bobcats and mountain lions wherever they roam.
Thank You,
Kimberly Baker
Klamath Forest Alliance
530-627-3090
Sign on letter:
Director, Wilderness and Wild and Scenic Rivers
Resources
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service
201 14th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20250
Dear Director:
We are writing to oppose the Forest Service rule
published in the June 7, 2006 Federal Register at
Volume 71, page 32915 that would expand trapping,
poisoning, and aerial gunning of bears, bobcats,
coyotes, foxes, mountain lions, wolves, and other
animals in federally designated wilderness areas and
research natural areas on Forest Service lands.
The proposed rule contains sweeping changes that
dramatically increase the conditions under which
predators may be killed in federally designated
wilderness areas and on Forest Service research
natural areas. Moreover, the new rule explicitly
permits hidden sodium cyanide traps within wilderness
areas for the first time, a reversal of the current
prohibition of these devices.
Predators play a vital ecological role, and they have
a place in wilderness areas and the public landscape
that surpasses any claim that can be made for domestic
livestock. They influence a myriad of other animals
and even plants in the ecosystems they inhabit. Their
prey species have evolved keen senses and strong
abilities to run, climb or fight for their lives in
the presence of predators—and
sometimes even time their parturition for maximum
safety.
The numeric balance of wildlife also shifts in
response to predation, and plants that are eaten by
the carnivores’ prey—such as cottonwood trees in
Yellowstone National Park where wolves have been
reintroduced—thrive when those herbivores’ access to
them is
limited. These changes in vegetation then further
reverberate in ecosystems in many ways, for example by
allowing beavers and songbirds to thrive.
Both Wilderness Areas and Research Natural Areas are
unsuited for aerial gunning and cyanide poisoning of
the animals that live there. Aerial gunning, killing
pups in their dens, and placement of buried cyanide
guns run completely contrary to the purposes for which
wilderness and research natural areas were designed,
and they
pose a danger to the many people who seek out
wilderness areas for the remote, primitive recreation
opportunities only those lands provide.
The most significant change in the new rule is Section
1(c), which authorizes collaborative groups to set
management goals and objectives for wildlife
populations, and calls for predator control in order
to achieve those objectives. For the first time,
predator control objectives in wilderness will be set
not by federal authorities but by
whatever private individuals have the ability or
financial incentive to form or attend a “collaborative
group.” Under this new provision, animals need not be
implicated in livestock depredation in order to be
targeted by predator control operations in wilderness
areas.
The current rule prevents indiscriminate predator
control in wilderness areas by requiring that only the
“offending individual” be targeted. But the new rule,
by contrast, permits entire “local populations” to be
killed in a wilderness area, thus making room for the
indiscriminate, programmatic killing of predators as a
general policy. And because the new rule does not
require an individual animal to have been implicated
in any livestock depredation in order to be killed, it
opens the door to
continuous, scheduled killing of all predators that
may be found in an area.
The proposed rule reverses the flat prohibition on the
infamous M44 cyanide guns, which are buried devices
that, when triggered, expel a cloud of lethal sodium
cyanide crystals. These devices are indiscriminate and
a danger to humans and their domestic pets as well as
wild animals, and do not belong anywhere on public
lands,
much less in wilderness areas or research natural
areas.
Finally, the proposed rule removes the requirement
that the Regional Forester authorize each control
action on a case-by-case basis, and even permits
private individuals to conduct predator control in
wilderness areas. This almost guarantees abuse by
livestock interests and others with financial
incentive to kill predators.
In sum, the new rule would remove or significantly
reduce all of the current substantive protections of
wilderness resources. It transforms a rule that
currently contains meaningful limitations on
government funded predator killing in wilderness areas
into one that permits programmatic and indiscriminate
targeting of entire local populations via aerial
gunning, motorized transport, and buried cyanide guns.
It risks the public’s health, and annihilates the
solitude so many seek in wilderness. It is a dramatic
step backwards in principles of ecosystem management
and the recognition of the important roles played by
predators in our nation’s most intact and cherished
landscapes. We believe the proposed rule should be
withdrawn in its entirety.
Respectfully Submitted,
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