Here is yet another failure of the Biden administration’s regulatory agencies, this time it is the FDA. Killiing wolves to benefit cattle ranchers. Supposedly. What is particularly disgusting about this report is that not only is it a blatant capitulation to monied interests, it also can be scientifically proven to be the wrong decision. As this report states, referencing well respected studies in doing so, “A 2014 report in the journal PLOS One found that livestock mortality actually increased as wolves were killed, possibly because the killings spurred surviving wolves to mate more often. A 2016 literature review found that non-lethal methods of reducing wolf/livestock conflicts were more effective than lethal ones, while a study in 2018 found that killing wolves in one area simply encouraged the animals to attack livestock in neighboring places.” What I find particularly discouraging about the Biden administration’s oversight of its regulatory agencies is that this is the third such action I have found and published just this last week.
Wildlife Services is tasked with mitigating conflicts between humans and wild animals. In Minnesota, the agency’s staffers answer complaints from ranchers who lose cattle and other livestock to wolf predation. The agency documents and verifies those complaints, and looks for non-lethal ways to protect threatened livestock, like wolf-proof fencing.
If those options don’t work, the agency traps and kills wolves deemed responsible for the loss. USDA officers kill more […]
