I try to never post anything on this site that does not, in one way or another, affect the L/D/N. In my local Sunday paper was a pretty large article about the Wildlife Services which kills predators. It was pretty shocking:

• With steel traps, wire snares and poison, agency employees have accidentally killed more than 50,000 animals since 2000 that were not problems, including federally protected golden and bald eagles; more than 1,100 dogs, including family pets; and several species considered rare or imperiled by wildlife biologists.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/28/445067 ... rylink=cpy





Today I went online to read the second installment:

Some details, though, can be gleaned from the agency's Web page, where it posts a sea of data showing – species by species – the millions of birds and mammals its employees kill each year. Sift through the numbers and you find that about 560,000 predators were killed across America from 2006 to 2011, an average of 256 a day.

The body count includes more than 25,000 red and gray foxes, 10,700 bobcats, 2,800 black bears, 2,300 timber wolves and 2,100 mountain lions. But the vast majority – about 512,500 – were coyotes.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/30/445221 ... ni_popular#storylink=cpy

I got an e-mail today that read Idaho's war on wolves.One year after Congress stripped Federal protection for wolves in the Northern Rockies,Idaho has eliminated almost half of their wolves.Idaho officials aren't stopping until they get the wolves down to 150 http://secure.defenders.org/site/Advocacy Jennifer

Interactive state by state graphic. Check out your state:
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/28/444895 ... illed.html

"Why would they put something out that would target animals that are no danger to anything?" said J.D. Walker, a car dealership manager whose dog was killed by the agency's poison southeast of Abilene last year. "It makes absolutely no sense."

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/06/25/458650 ... k=misearch#storylink=cpy

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated"---Gandhi

It is very important to protect the wildlife. We are having a problem here in South Africa with poaching of our rhinos. Soon there will be none left. When we went to America we saw only one buffallo in South Dakota and some deer. We saw chipmunks at the Grand Canyon. That was it. I would have longed to see a mountain lion, a bear, a beaver or a racoon! I think racoons are cute!

My husband and I have been feeding a raccoon lately and I looked out my kitchen window yesterday morning and the raccoon was sitting on the top of our fence.He was eating our green grapes that are on that fence.That raccoon is getting braver and braver and my husband had to scream at him to stop eating them.He ran off out of our yard.Jennifer

I have to wonder what roads you took because you're not going to see much from the Interstate. Did you go to any of the National Parks other than the Grand Canyon? Tatanka is still within the park boundaries of Yellowstone where you should have seen elk, moose and deer as well.

I think that perhaps you may have an overly romanticized view of the animals you listed. Mountain Lions view you as food, plain and simple. A female bear with cubs is nothing I would want to run into. Beavers are pretty cool but racoons while looking so cute and cuddly are pretty bad assed. They will kill a good hound dog if the encounter is near water. They are very strong and will try drown the dog. However, all have a right TO BE.

Living in California I have seen all the animals you listed including the buffalo. The buffalo was on a ranch and you could view them from the car as you drove by. The bears I saw were dead when some guy my father knew brought them by to show off. Nothing is more manly than displaying a dead sow and her two cubs. They stunk to high heaven and it was not the death smell. I walked away in total disgust at the "hunter." When you see as I have seen a fresh paw print in new snow you start to realize just how big and probably dangerous they are. It's time to move on. An older brother and I once camped in the Olympic National Forest. We got to the camp site late and were busy getting a fire going and unpacking food to cook. I looked up and saw a raccoon on the table with our bread in its hands. I started yelling and advancing towards it to scare it away. About five or six feet away from it, it raised up on its hind legs, growled a nasty growl and bared its teeth with the canines prominent. Stopped me dead in my tracks because we were eyeball to eyeball!! I couldn't back pedal fast enough. Needless to say we went without bread that meal.

There is no justification for the slaughter animals listed in the articles I've posted here. They often shoot them for being in the area, not for actually killing stock. To me it is the same mindset that so often took place regarding Indians. No need to get the guilty party, just kill anyone in the area and proudly proclaim yourself to be an "Indian fighter." No matter that they were women, old ones and children and were doing nothing but living within their own territory.

"In March, two congressmen, John Campbell, R-Irvine, and Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., introduced a bill that would ban the agency's use of spring-loaded sodium cyanide devices – known as M-44s – which have accidentally killed more than 3,400 non-target animals since 2006, including 250 dogs.

Earlier this month, they – along with two other lawmakers – wrote a letter requesting a congressional investigation of Wildlife Services, citing a series of stories in The Bee this spring that found agency practices are often indiscriminate, inhumane, expensive and carried out with little or no public input."

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/06/30/460121 ... k=misearch#storylink=cpy

Hau Lostspirit,
I will be realy surprise if anyone of this agency know who is Gandy.This persons that I can not named human being kill animals with the awareness for very importent mission.Animals for them are harmful piese of detail in the landscape.
toksa

Hau Ivan,

To kill in such a reckless manner is, for me, very hard to understand. They must be direct descendants of these:

"Contrary to the myth of discovery, Europeans had no interest or ability in wilderness; their civilization did not spread where there were no people to rob or harness. Europe's presence in the Americas was strictly parasitic until the industrial age."

Ronald Wright..............Stolen Continents 500 Years of Conquest and Resistance in the Americas

"Coyotes primarily feed on small mammals, like rabbits, rodents and squirrels, but they can also prey on larger animals like deer and livestock. Biologists say natural predators, like coyotes, are vital to a healthy ecosystem because they keep other species' populations down. And the more coyotes that are killed, the more coyotes will reproduce. If a member of the pack is killed, for instance, the alpha female responds by producing more litters."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/03/12/an ... z2OgKNOKyj


https://www.change.org/petitions/fire-u ... elty#share

Lost Spirit, I have coyotes in my neck of the woods so I found your links very interesting. I agree, it is of utmost importance to save our wildlife. Coyotes have rights and they are now becoming so use to people that they are putting themselves in danger by approaching humans. However, as this article states, "As humans expand their living areas and coyotes expand their range as well, contact is inevitable. Most of the time, coyotes go out of their way to avoid humans, but they are discovering that humans are a good source for food. Resourceful and adaptable as coyotes are, they will take advantage of this when they can. In urban areas and in some National Parks the coyotes are changing their behavior."
Just deserts?

My dial up does not want to cooperate; the article I quoted from in my defense of coyotes URL is: http://www.desertusa.com/june96/coyotes_and_people.html.

Hi Lost Spirit I can't access my messages.

lilac, I hope you can, at some time if not now, access this link:

http://www.nytimes.com/video/2013/03/22 ... h_20130323

Same mentality as in Vietnam: "We had to destroy the village in order to save it." I don't understand people like this. It is bad enough knowing they exist but I'll never understand them.

On the link you just posted it reads:"Coyotes have attacked people. It is not common, but there have been more attacks reported in recent years due to the urbanization and population growth of cities that boarder wildlife areas." What do people expect when they take all the animal's habitat away from them?

But it is the total disregard for other life forms that bothers me. "We did not look for what was wrong with the animals but looked for what was good." Neither Wolf Nor Dog.............Kent Nerburn