Call for end to USDA's wildlife killing agency

Conservationists argue in a new report that U.S. taxpayers should stop subsidizing a $100 million program that kills more than 1 million wild animals annually, a program ranchers and farmers have defended for nearly a century as critical to protecting their livestock from predators. Citing concerns about the economy and the potential for a fresh look at the decades-old controversy in the new Obama administration, 115 environmental groups signed onto a recent letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack urging him to abolish the U.S. Agriculture Department's Wildlife Services. The American Sheep Industry Association, National Cattlemen's Beef Association and more than 70 other livestock production and state agriculture offices in 35 states countered with a letter citing more than $125 million in annual losses to the sheep, goat and cattle industry as a result of predation. A report by conservationists released Tuesday documents significant increases in recent years in both the number of carnivores killed and the size of the agency's budget — $117 million in 2007, up 14 percent from the average from 2004-06. More than 90,000 of the 121,524 carnivores killed in 2007 were coyotes. But the trapping, poisoning and aerial gunning of the predators also is taking an increasing, unintended toll on other creatures, including 511 black bears and 340 endangered gray wolves in 2007, according to a copy of the report obtained by The Associated Press...AP