An important paper spotlighting the fact that our wildlife Federal policy, substantively designed to please commercial interests (i.e, ranchers), and a depraved but influential minority (hunters) has been highjacked by these interests and is not only immoral, cruel and corrupt, but plain bad science. —P. Greanville
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD PDF—> License to kill: reforming federal wildlife control to restore biodiversity and ecosystem function
Bradley J. Bergstrom1 , Lily C. Arias2, Ana D. Davidson3, AdamW. Ferguson4, Lynda A. Randa5, & Steven R. Sheffield6,7,8
1 Department of Biology, Valdosta State University, Valdosta, GA 31698, USA
2 Center for North American Bat Research & Conservation, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN 47809, USA
3 Department of Ecology & Evolution, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA
4 Department of Biological Sciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA
5 Health & Sciences Division, College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, IL 60137, USA
6 Department of Natural Sciences, Bowie State University, Bowie, MD 20715, USA
7 College of Natural Resources & Environment, Virginia Tech, National Capital Region – Northern Virginia Center, Falls Church, VA 22403, USA
8 Order of authors after first author is alphabetical
Correspondence
Bradley J. Bergstrom, Department of Biology, Valdosta State University, 1500 N. Patterson St., Valdosta, GA 31698-0015, USA.
Tel: (229) 333-5770; fax: (229) 245-6585.
E-mail: bergstrm@valdosta.edu
Received 26 April 2013
Accepted 30 May 2013
Editor Phillip Levin
doi: 10.1111/conl.12045
Abstract
For more than 100 years, the US government has conducted lethal control of native wildlife, to benefit livestock producers and to enhance game populations, especially in the western states. Since 2000, Wildlife Services (WS), an agency of the US Department of Agriculture, has killed 2 million native mammals, predominantly 20 species of carnivores, beavers, and several species of ground-dwelling squirrels, but also many nontarget species. Many are important species in their native ecosystems (e.g., ecosystem engineers such as prairie dogs and beavers, and apex predators such as gray wolves). Reducing their populations, locally or globally, risks cascading negative consequences including impoverishment of biodiversity, loss of resilience to biotic invasions, destabilization of populations at lower trophic levels, and loss of many ecosystem services that benefit human society directly and indirectly. Lethal predator control is not effective at reducing depredation in the long term. Instead, we recommend that WS and its government partners involved in wildlife conflict management emphasize training livestock producers in methods of nonlethal control, with sparing use of lethal control by methods that are species-specific, and cease all lethal control in federal wilderness areas and for the purpose of enhancing populations of common game species.
In repose to: License to kill: reforming federal wildlife control to restore biodiversity and ecosystem function (https://www.greanvillepost.com/2014/01/12/license-to-kill-reforming-federal-wildlife-control-to-restore-biodiversity-and-ecosystem-function/) The first license to kill was issued 5000 years ago in genesis: ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give… Read more »