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Nevada Predators Under Attack

The situation Nevada predators face is fully described below in this December 5, 2009 Reno Gazette Journal article by Jeff DeLong. Watch these pages and the TrailSafe group emails for the final policy decisions on these predator extermination proposals.

December 5, 2009
Reno Gazette Journal

Groups target Nevada predators
By Jeff DeLong
jdelong@rgj.com

Mountain lions, coyotes and other predators that prey on mule deer or sage grouse could be killed under a proposal to be considered today by state wildlife officials.
Supporters, including some members of the Nevada Wildlife Commission, insist the predators should be killed to prevent continued depletion of Nevada 's deer herds as well as sage grouse, which faces potential listing under the Endangered Species Act.
Critics counter the proposal is unjustified and represents a case of politics trumping science, with the issue serving as an example of continuing disagreement over fundamental policy when it comes to managing Nevada wildlife.
"In order to have healthy populations of everything, we need to manage them. We have to do something," said Scott Raine, a sportsman's representative and vice chairman of the wildlife commission.
Raine, who also chairs the commission's Wildlife Damage Management Committee, is recommending approval of a plan first proposed by two sportsman organizations, Hunter's Alert and the Nevada Alliance 4 Wildlife. The projects would be paid for through the Department of Wildlife's Heritage fund, raised through fees charged with the purchase of hunting tags to finance projects benefiting wildlife.
The projects:
• $566,000 over five years to kill mountain lions and coyotes to protect mule deer herds in targeted areas of Elko and Lander counties.
• $50,000 in 2010 to kill mountain lions and coyotes to protect mule deer herds in targeted areas of Humboldt, Lander, Eureka, White Pine, Lincoln and Clark counties.
• $250,000 over five years to kill coyotes, badgers, skunks and ravens to protect sage grouse in targeted areas of Elko and Lander counties.
The work would be contracted to specialists with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services. Animals would be shot, snared or trapped. Coyotes could be shot from the air.
"If the commission approves it, then we'll work with the applicants to get their project off the ground," said department spokesman Chris Healy. Department staff is not making a recommendation on the proposals, but initially rejected them as lacking sufficient detail, Healy said. These are believed to be the first such predator control efforts proposed by the sportsmen groups, he said.
One was pushed by Cecil Fredi, president of Hunter's Alert in Las Vegas . Fredi's group has been critical of the Department of Wildlife's practices, insisting they should do more to maintain big game herds for hunting rather than focus on such things as conservation projects. It is particularly concerned over decline of mule deer herds and blames mountain lions and other predators as a key cause.
Hunter's Alert endorsed Jim Gibbons' successful 2006 campaign for governor. As governor, Gibbons has wholly restructured membership of the nine-member Nevada Wildlife Commission.
Don Molde, a longtime member of the Nevada Humane Society and former board member of Defenders of Wildlife, criticized the proposed predator control projects and characterized them as further evidence of a worrying shift in the way the Department of Wildlife does business.
"There's no need for this. There's absolutely no science or any data to support the need," Molde said, adding that the projects are not the type to be financed by the Heritage fund.
"The piggybank is being raided by those who want to kill yet more coyotes and lions," Molde said.
Molde questions the notion that mountain lions pose any real serious threat to deer herds, saying the continuing loss of deer habitat to development and wildfire is a far more significant problem.
"Habitat issues are the main factor by far," Molde said. "That's absolutely true and it's not just me saying that. The Department of Wildlife says that. They don't care what the department says, they want to kill predators."
The issue, Molde said, has pit politics against biology "and biology is losing."
Raine, however, said a proactive approach to thin predator numbers is needed to help a mule deer population that is "crashing."
"Right now, in certain areas, there is a predator-prey imbalance," Raine said.
Protecting sage grouse from predators could prove critical to prevent listing of the bird and resulting widespread impacts across Nevada , Raine said.
"It could affect everything on public land if this listing were to happen," Raine said. "It could hurt everything."

"Let us correctly extend the great principles of liberty, equality and fraternity over the tragic lives of animals. Let animal slavery join human slavery in the graveyard of the past".
Professor Patrick Corbett, Fellow Balliol College, Oxford