Mendocino County to review predator-killing contract with federal Wildlife Services

Activists who hope to someday halt the practice of trapping and killing errant wild animals nationwide have gained a foothold in Mendocino County with a lawsuit settlement that requires the county to consider nonlethal ways of controlling creatures that kill livestock and destroy property.

Under the terms of the agreement, an environmental impact review that includes nonlethal alternatives to killing nuisance animals must be completed before the county can renew its $142,000 contract for two U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services trappers, which is up for renewal in June.

“We think an environmental review will show that it’s not only worse for the environment and ecosystem, it’s also bad for predator control,” said Jessica Blome, staff attorney with the Animal Legal Defense Fund, one of five groups that filed a lawsuit against the county’s trapper program late last year.

Ranchers are worried. They consider the program crucial to limiting their livestock losses to predatory animals, such as coyotes, and keeping their operations viable.

“It’s very important, especially to the sheep producers,” said rancher and Mendocino County Supervisor Carre Brown.

The trappers - called “wildlife specialists” - don’t just kill livestock predators. They hunt, remove or kill a wide variety of animals, from potentially rabid skunks that take up residence under urban homes to bears that threaten property and livestock. They also educate ranchers and residents about how to avoid animal nuisance problems and test sick animals for diseases.

“The public health component of Wildlife Services is something that gets overlooked,” said Mendocino County Farm Bureau Executive Director Devon Jones.

Blome said the trapper program focuses on reducing livestock predation and primarily benefits farmers “who don’t want to expend their own resources to protect their own animals.”

Coyotes bear the brunt of that focus, she said. Of 459 animals trappers killed in 2012 in Mendocino County, 126 were coyotes, according to statistics from the Animal Legal Defense Fund. Local statistics maintained by the USDA and Mendocino County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office were not available and the Defense Fund declined to provide its list of the other animals that were killed.

Nationwide, Wildlife Services has drawn criticism, both for its methods and for an undisclosed number of nonpredator animals the agency kills. A 2012 series by the Sacramento Bee found the agency had accidentally killed more than 50,000 animals that weren’t problems, including federally protected eagles and even household pets.

Animal activists contend it’s not necessary to kill predators. They instead can be discouraged from killing livestock through the use of guard dogs or llamas - whose presence tends to discourage predators - and more effective fencing, methods used in Marin County, which abolished its trapping program in 2000. Mendocino County farming officials said most livestock ranchers in their area already utilize dogs, with varying degrees of success.

It’s been “very successful in Marin County,” Blome said of the nonlethal program.

Marin County Agricultural Commissioner Stacy Carlsen said the county uses money it once spent on trappers to help ranchers buy guard dogs and build fencing. It also will reimburse a small, varying percentage of financial losses to farmers who lose livestock to predators.

It was rough going at first, but Carlsen said he considers the program to be a success.

Chris Cornett, who raises some 2,000 sheep in Sonoma and Marin counties, disagrees. Ranchers are hurting and the trapper ban is not keeping coyotes from being killed, only changing who is doing the killing, he said. He said that he and a neighbor had shot 20 to 30 “problem coyotes” between them this year.

Cornett said some sheep ranchers have quit the business because it’s more trouble than its worth. The fences and dogs help, but it’s not enough to keep coyotes that eat sheep at bay, he said.

“One coyote will get to killing. Until you stop it, it kills every night, or second night” until someone kills the coyote, he said.

“I kill a lot of coyotes myself,” as do most sheep ranchers in Marin County, Cornett said.

Killing coyotes is unregulated and requires no permits, so private statistics are not maintained by any agency.

Even if Marin’s program is successful at reducing predation problems, Brown and Jones say it’s doubtful it would be as effective in Mendocino County, which has more rugged, spread-out and remote terrain than Marin County, where livestock tend to be more concentrated, and thus easier to monitor.

It has more than four times as much land to watch over. Mendocino County has more than 700,000 acres of pasture land on which sheep and cattle can graze while Marin County has about 155,000 acres, according to agricultural reports from the two counties. Each county had in the neighborhood of 10,000 sheep and lambs in 2013. Sonoma County had more sheep than the two put together: 33,116.

Sonoma County also has more range land and pasture than Marin County, with just over 335,000 acres.

“We have sheep producers running 1,500 head over 1,000 acres. It’s a lot more difficult to protect our animals in that kind of setting,” said Sonoma County Agricultural Commissioner Tony Linegar.

Mendocino and Sonoma counties also have predators that aren’t a significant problem in Marin County, including mountain lions and bears, farm officials said.

Mendocino County is just one of many counties to be challenged by animal rights activists over its federal trapping program.

In 2013, Sonoma County opted not to renew its federal trapper contract after receiving a letter from the organizations taking issue with the program. The county instead hired its own trappers.

It has one full-time and one part-time trapper, Linegar said.

The activists seeking to ban the trapper program in Mendocino County will be giving a report on alternatives to killing predators at the Board of Supervisors’ May 5 meeting.

You can reach Staff Writer Glenda Anderson at 462-6473 or glenda.anderson@pressdemo?crat.com. On Twitter ?@MendoReporter.