JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Plenty of federal agencies protect wildlife on the public's behalf. But one U.S. Department of Agriculture program - called Wildlife Services - kills wild animals at the request of ranchers and livestock owners. Officials say that unless the animals are invasive, federal employees only kill wild animals that have preyed on livestock or caused damage. But NPR's investigations team obtained government records that show that's not true. Here's reporter Chiara Eisner.
(SOUNDBITE OF RAIN FALLING)
CHIARA EISNER, BYLINE: It's raining on the LF Ranch, a 35,000-acre property in Montana, just a couple hours' drive south of Glacier National Park.
I'm getting in Andrew Bardwell's truck for a tour of the property - he manages it. Bardwell says he's seeing more grizzly bears here than usual, and they sometimes go after the cattle. He's tried keeping predators away with non-lethal tools like flashing lights, but bears in particular are difficult.
ANDREW BARDWELL: And we have no tools whatsoever to deal with them. So you're just left with bringing in primarily Wildlife Services to try and solve the problem.
EISNER: Wildlife Services - it's a program that got its start back in the 1930s, when Congress gave the federal government permission to kill wildlife for people like Bardwell. With a $287 million annual budget and offices in all 50 states, the USDA employees do other tasks today, too, like relocate flocks of birds to avoid airplane collisions and vaccinate raccoons. But ranchers like Bardwell can still call and ask the federal government to kill wildlife for them. Not even species like grizzly bears - that are threatened and otherwise protected by the Endangered Species Act - are exempt, as long as there's a risk to livestock or human life.
Staying on public land doesn't save the wild animals, either. Wildlife Services is also allowed to kill wild animals in wild places, like national parks and forests. Taxpayers cover the bill. Bardwell says the help from the government is important for his business, and he only calls when there's an issue.
BARDWELL: If it took a hard turn and there were no options for removal of problem animals, it would get incredibly expensive then.
EISNER: With the exception of invasive species, Wildlife Services claims it only kills those kind of problem animals that damage private property. But NPR obtained and digitized thousands of work orders from 2019 through 2022 to build a database that shows Wildlife Services does kill native animals without evidence of livestock loss - and it does it often. The documents reveal the program killed 11,000 wild animals over the course of three years just in Montana, on properties where there hadn't been any recent livestock damage recorded.
CARTER NIEMEYER: Essentially, you're shooting a wolf or a coyote because it might kill a sheep or a calf next spring.
EISNER: Carter Niemeyer worked for Montana's division of Wildlife Services for 26 years, first in the field, hunting animals, then as a supervisor.
NIEMEYER: There was no effort or attempt made to, you know, get the specific animal. So often, we would fly in the early morning, as soon as it was good light, and any coyote within the signed-up area that was visible, we killed them.
EISNER: Shooting animals from helicopters and planes allows Wildlife Services to kill large numbers in a short amount of time. That's what we found. The records we obtained show Wildlife Services killed 318 coyotes in just one area in Montana over three years. But not a single coyote was shown to be responsible for any livestock losses at that location during that time. In a different location, the documents show Wildlife Services employees killed 61 coyotes in under four hours while flying in a helicopter.
COLLETTE ADKINS: Yeah, that's a blood bath. That's just - seems like yahoos with rifles, killing everything they see that moves.
EISNER: That's Collette Adkins. She's a lawyer at the Center for Biological Diversity, who focuses on issues affecting carnivores and endangered species.
ADKINS: It's horrible to imagine the amount of suffering involved there.
EISNER: Research shows it can actually be bad for the ranchers, too. Scientists say that killing predators indiscriminately can make conflicts with livestock worse, not better. I talked with canine ecologist Bob Crabtree, in a national forest near Bozeman, to understand more about how that works.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
EISNER: So we're walking down a tiny path to this alpine lake called Fairy Lake.
BOB CRABTREE: Thumbs up for public access to public lands.
EISNER: It's counterintuitive, but Crabtree explains that while shooting into a pack of coyotes or wolves can temporarily weaken the pack, the splintered pack then turns to easier prey like livestock, which can actually put livestock at a greater risk of being attacked. And there's another problem.
CRABTREE: There's that powerful law of interdependence that's going to, you might say, screw up the balance of nature. And then there's a laundry list of other things carnivores do. They keep our elk populations healthy. They take out the weak and the old and the sick.
EISNER: The records NPR obtained show that half of all the wolves killed in Montana by Wildlife Services from 2019 through 2022 were killed in just five areas. Wolves aren't considered threatened or endangered in Montana - there are about 1,100 of them across the state. But in just those five locations, Wildlife Services killed 71 wolves, or about 6% of the state's population. Scientists NPR spoke with say this handful of ranchers that own those properties are having outsized effects on local environments.
CRABTREE: Oh, huge. It amounts to local extirpation. Yeah, local extinction.
EISNER: Although NPR has been requesting to speak with Wildlife Services for months, the program wouldn't allow reporters to talk to anyone in an interview. In an emailed statement, the agency said it, quote, "strives to reduce damage caused by wildlife without impacting sustainable wildlife populations." That's not what some ranchers say they're seeing on the ground.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
HILARY ZARANEK: Wildlife Services has very much taken the approach of be buddy-buddy with the ranching community, which means do what the ranching community wants, which is kill stuff.
EISNER: That's Hilary Zaranek. She invited me to her family ranch in Montana's Paradise Valley.
(SOUNDBITE OF GATE OPENING)
EISNER: We're heading towards a small group of misfit cattle that are grazing under some trees. The rest of the herd are at another ranch until the fall.
ZARANEK: See, like that cow up there, a couple of years ago - she's not a heifer - but see, she broke her hip.
EISNER: Zaranek says she's seen some Wildlife Services trappers work responsibly, but others she says take, quote, "extreme liberties to kill animals."
ZARANEK: The problem is is that so much is left in their discretion, creating a system that never had any hope to work in collaboration with nature. And so until you address that, the only thing you're ever going to be able to do is blame the predator and kill them.
EISNER: Although she makes her living from livestock, Zaranek believes it's time Wildlife Services be held more accountable for how they kill wild animals that belong to the public. Chiara Eisner, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANDERSON .PAAK SONG, "FIRE IN THE SKY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
