Letters to the editor

To the Editor:

In his Jan. 31 letter to the editor titled “Predators a serious concern,” Kyle Farmer accuses the Mendocino Non-lethal Wildlife Alliance of having “dealt a serious blow to progressive ranchers’ ability to influence our more conservatively minded colleagues when they opened up yet another divisive lawsuit against our under-funded county.” Mr. Farmer’s letter recycles many of the old myths about the USDA Wildlife Services ( WS) wildlife management program that need to be laid to rest.

Mr. Farmer claims that as “trained professionals” WS trappers “make sure that when animals are killed it is done as humanely as possible.” This is a demonstrably false public relations ploy by WS. WS regularly deploys neck snares that result in long agonizing deaths by slow strangulation for animals caught in them. WS also regularly deploys leghold traps that snap shut on an animal’s leg, leaving it to suffer until the trapper returns to kill it, often several days later. Animals caught in leghold traps experience such terror that they often try to gnaw their own leg off to escape. For those who doubt this, we urge you to watch the video “EXPOSED: USDA’s Secret War on Wildlife” by the national nonprofit advocacy organization Predator Defense, at this link: https://www.predatordefense.org/exposed/.

Mr. Farmer goes on to make the dubious argument that without WS, ranchers will kill even more predators. He claims that “Those counties who have suspended Wildlife Services are not animal sanctuaries — the killings simply go deeper underground,” offering this as a reason to retain WS. While there is only anecdotal evidence of how many animals are killed by ranchers, there is actual data from WS showing their kill rate in Mendocino County. Between 1997 and 2017, WS killed 8,802 wild animals in the County, which includes 181 mountain lions (cougars), 261 black bears, 235 gray foxes, 112 bobcats, 4,119 coyotes, 1,287 striped skunks and 868 raccoons. These figures do not include many more non-target animals including threatened and endangered species and domestic dogs and cats.

Far too often, WS actions are abominable and Mendocino County should not be complicit in the damage WS inflicts on the naturalworld. Since a narrowmajority of our county’s Board of Supervisors has refused to terminate its association with WS, Mendocino NonlethalWildlife Alliance felt compelled to sue the County to end this unnecessary slaughter of native wildlife and to preserve the integrity of the county’s natural ecology. We have been clear thatwe are looking for a fair settlement next month, not costly extended litigation.

We reject Farmer’s false claim that protection of livestock and other property is not offered in counties that have terminated their association with WS. In fact, Sonoma County has a model program, operated by the non-profit Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue, that offers a non-lethal wildlife exclusion service to mediate human/wildlife conflicts. Mendocino Non-lethal Wildlife Alliance proposes that our county adopt a wildlife management program based on this Sonoma County model, including the following four attributes:

1) Mendocino County would vest responsibility for wildlife damage management with the county’s Animal Care Services and/or a non-governmental organization capable of providing such services.

2) Mendocino County would adopt a fundamentally non-lethal plan, whose terms would include a ban on killing wildlife in non- emergency situations until all non-lethal methods appropriate to the situation have been exhausted over a reasonable period of time.

3) Mendocino County would hire and train two professional wildlife exclusion technicians who would help property owners (including livestock owners) implement appropriate non-lethalmethods to protect their property. Exclusion technicians would be prohibited from using lethal methods.

4) Mendocino County would not hire a full time trapper, but rather, in the event lethal methods are indicated, the County would hire a licensed trapper on a fee-for-service basis.

There is one point on which we surely can all agree: Mendocino County’s wildlife have asmuch right to live here as we do, and it is our duty as human beings to protect them with our wildlife management program.

-Mendocino Non-lethal Wildlife Alliance Steering Committee: Rose Ireland, Don Lipmanson, Carol Misseldine, Jon Spitz