If budgets were based on wishes

Inter Lake editorial

A formidable mob of 115 environmental groups are brandishing torches and pitchforks, seeking to end the rein of Wildlife Services, the federal agency charged with predator control.

The groups say the $100 million program kills more than 1 million wild animals every year, and this "war on wildlife" must come to an end.

Well, OK, if they say so. Maybe it is time for at least one federal program to go away, just as long as the public understands that the need for predator control won't magically disappear.

Whether it's provided by counties, or states or private contractors, there will always be a need for some degree of predator control to protect farmers and ranchers from livestock losses due to predators. Otherwise, farmers and ranchers are bound to take up the task themselves.

The environmental groups have petitioned the Obama administration to abolish Wildlife Services, a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But the American Sheep Industry Association, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and more than 70 other livestock producers and state agriculture offices are countering, saying there are more than $125 million in livestock losses to predators every year. That's not chump change for the industries that put meat on the American table.

WildEarth Guardians charges that Wildlife Services uses a 'sledgehammer approach" that makes indiscriminate use of poisons and traps to kill off predators. More than 120,000 coyotes were killed in 2007.

But here in Northwest Montana, we are most familiar with Wildlife Service trappers being called in for the targeted elimination of problem wolves. Because of their endangered status, wolves can't be harassed - and certainly not killed - by farmers and ranchers even if witnessed attacking livestock. Wildlife Services is currently the only option for dealing with wolves that have a track record for killing livestock.

If the agency is eliminated, the job will still fall to someone. And because wolves are here as part of a concerted federal effort, managing them must indeed be paid for by federal taxpayers rather than farmers and ranchers who bear the biggest costs of having them on the landscape.