by Gregory McNamee
In 1928, the last known wild wolf was shot dead in Arkansas. Fifteen years later, the last wolves in Colorado, Arizona, and Wyoming were killed. The last wolves in Michigan and Wisconsin were eradicated 20-odd years later, with a population surviving only in the remotest reaches of northern Minnesota, hard by the Canadian border. Apart from a few outliers, that population was the last in the lower 48 states.
Most of that killing was brought about by two kinds of agents: private hunters operating on bounty, and federal employees of a little-known branch of the US Department of Agriculture that now bears the Orwellian name Wildlife Services.
Born in 1915 as the Branch of Predator and Rodent Control, Wildlife Services has one overarching goal: to eradicate animals that are perceived to be damaging to agriculture. Animals that are harmful to the environment, such as zebra mussels, have lately fallen into the agency’s purview as well, but agriculture remains its primary focus, and in that regard it operates with ruthless efficiency, even if it is a battle that may never end. According to the Sacramento Bee, which published an extensive series on Wildlife Services last April, inhumane neck-snare traps placed by the agency alone accounted for the deaths of 94,408 coyotes between 2006 and 2011. continue reading…