Landmark Settlement Reins in Rogue Federal Wildlife Killing Program

A federal court approved a groundbreaking settlement agreement between WildEarth Guardians and the federal wildlife killing program, Wildlife Services, late last week. The settlement comes over a year after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed that WildEarth Guardians’ interests are injured by the program’s activities and the organization may challenge them in court. Under the settlement, Wildlife Services will conduct new environmental analyses in Nevada and across the nation, cease reliance on an old, largely debunked analysis and end killing activities on certain public lands. “This agreement means Wildlife Services can no longer rely on disproven ‘science’ to justify its cruel and ecologically unsound killing practices,” said Bethany Cotton, wildlife program director for WildEarth Guardians. “We call on the program to use this opportunity to accept the clear science demonstrating that lethal control of native wildlife is ineffective and often counterproductive, and to adopt a coexistence mandate.” In August 2015, the Ninth Circuit held the program’s reliance on a twenty year old analysis, which itself relies on outdated and largely disproven decades old science, was not immune from environmental review. The settlement requires the program to no longer rely on the outdated 22-year-old Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS). The program will conduct a new environmental analysis of its activities in Nevada, and will update all analyses nationwide that rely on the 1994 PEIS. The program will also cease all killing activities in designated Wilderness and Wilderness Study Areas in Nevada — over six million acres of public lands — at least until the new analysis is complete...more