
Wildlife Services, a US agency planting 'cyanide bombs' to kill predators - rainhacker
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/26/cyanide-bombs-wildfire-services-idaho
======
Exmoor
A few years ago I read Coyote America, by Dan Flores. A large portion of this
book is dedicated to Wildlife Services efforts to cull the Coyote. They've
been fantastically unsuccessful in this effort, most likely due to behavioral
quirk of the species. Coyotes can identify specific individuals by voice, and
if one of those voices disappears from the nightly call it causes the females
to enter estrus and breed. So if you kill a Coyote multiple more Coyotes
literally spring up in their place.

~~~
emiliobumachar
That's intriguing, could you provide a link? If all females can just reproduce
more, I would expect one would break ranks and increase her own fitness by
maxing out regardless.

~~~
blocko
I was also intriqued and put ~10min looking into it. This study[1] seems to
suggest that although reproduction rates might increase modestly when the
population is reduced, high immigration rates are the bigger factor. If anyone
finds anything on the (voices disappearing)->(estrus) mechanism described
above I'd like to see it, sounds really interesting.

[1]
[https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jwm...](https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jwmg.21329)

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hedora
They shouldn’t be allowed to place them without notifying people beforehand,
preferably by getting those people’s signatures.

According to the article, they’re nowhere near that level of notification.
They certainly didn’t notify the local emergency response personnel, which is
just negligent.

These things have the same failure mode as landmines: If forgotten, they might
kill some random person years later, and at that point, locating and removing
them costs orders of magnitude more than placing them.

At the very least, there needs to be a public map of where these things are,
and an 5-10’ ring of signs at eye level around each one.

The tiny sign they place at ground level on top of the trap could easily be
lost or overlooked, and it won’t inform people with pets to stay out of the
area until it’s too late.

~~~
driverdan
> They shouldn’t be allowed to place them without notifying people beforehand

They shouldn't be allowed to use them, period.

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Icathian
This article seems like a hell of a reach. I have a master's in Fisheries
Science that was funded in part by FWS, though I no longer work in that field,
so I may not be entirely objective.

That said, the simple reality is that managing native species and how they
interact with society has to be done. Whether it's suburban coyotes killing
off family pets (a big problem in my suburb at the moment) or rural clashes
between ranchers and wolves, you cannot just let the situation unfurl without
official intervention. Allowing civilians to handle it results in endangerment
and extinction, and refusing to handle it results in ecological damage and
risk to both people and livestock.

Now, if the only point is that better training and communication protocols for
these Federal employees is in order, sure I buy that for basically every
Federal department. Making out like FWS is some pet-assassinating Kremlin is
pretty low-effort clickbait. The reason nobody's heard of them is because
nobody much cares about what does or doesn't happen to coyotes and deer until
it impacts them.

~~~
captainredbeard
Simple solution: let ranchers shoot problematic species.

~~~
earthscienceman
In Colorado you can shoot anything you want if it is harassing your cattle,
even family dogs. An example from my hometown:

[https://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/da-will-not-press-
charge...](https://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/da-will-not-press-charges-
after-kremmling-rancher-shoots-kills-neighbors-husky-puppy/)

~~~
woeirua
Seems like an overreaction but some dogs behave very aggressively around
cattle and other animals due to instinct. Its entirely possible that the dog
was not responsive to commands, and was going after the cattle in a serious
way. A 4 month old husky is not a tiny puppy. There's more to this story than
meets the eye. I highly doubt the neighbor shot the dog without trying
anything else first.

~~~
hombre_fatal
Where my parents live in the countryside, some people -- like kids visiting
their parents for the month -- will bring their dogs and let them roam around.
Dogs will form up in a pack of 2 or more and kill things on your property,
like chickens. Or they'll instigate larger animals like the emus and end up
biting/breaking the animal's ankle.

You can scare them away easily (dogs are generally skittish) but they'll come
back.

I've also learned that some people are completely unreasonable when it comes
to their pets, basically believing that "it's just a dog" and you're the
asshole if you can't handle it being on your property.

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smcameron
Here's a description of the m44 device:
[https://www.aphis.usda.gov/publications/wildlife_damage/fs-m...](https://www.aphis.usda.gov/publications/wildlife_damage/fs-m44-device.pdf)

~~~
mkoryak
Interestingly, the picture in the AP article above and the one in the manual
do not match. The one in your link has a danger sign, but the one in the
article has no such sign.

I wonder if the one that killed that dog had a sign.

~~~
sjg007
Even a danger sign won't stop a dog or say a small child.

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cowboysauce
I remember reading about these years ago and I'm surprised that they're still
in use. There's definitely a need to control wildlife populations, but doing
it with devices that are akin to cyanide landmines seems like a bad idea.

The people in the article were unaware that one of these devices was placed a
few hundred feet from their property. The signage on these devices also seem
to be very small. I'm wondering if medical services are given any training or
a heads up when these devices are placed. Cyanide poisoning is not the most
common thing and I'm wondering how quickly medical services would recognize
it.

These devices also seem to contain a large amount of sodium cyanide (880 mg).
This is definitely enough cyanide to kill a child and even some adults. Though
it seems like the release mechanism would make it difficult for a person to
actually ingest all of the cyanide.

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Randor
Wow,

This seems like a really bad idea. I would be furious if anyone put that thing
350ft from my house.

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Phillips126
Are these devices surrounded by warning signs to ward off individuals that may
be getting too close? I've not heard of these devices before and as someone
who lives on the edge of a large wooded area with young kids this alarms me.
I'd presume they would at least nail some signs to nearby trees supporting
bright colors to inform an uneducated passerby that danger lies ahead.

EDIT - After doing a bit more research on these mechanisms I feel a bit better
knowing they are triggered by animals biting and pulling on the cloth portion
to release the poison (I still don't like these devices). I was concerned it
was more proximity based. They do appear to be tagged with a bright colored
warning label on the device itself.

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cafard
A relative used to work for them. It's fair to say that the organization isn't
widely known, but you could say the same for the National Geodetic Survey.

~~~
nitrogen
I really like happening upon USGS/NGS survey markers on mountain summits.
Oldest I've seen is from the 1890s (under a different agency name).

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Ericson2314
The USDA is infamous for being especially cozy with the industry it's supposed
to look after. Department of the Interior should probably do anything to do
with wildlife.

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ryan_j_naughton
> "The American Sheep Industry Association has called the M-44 a 'critical
> tool' that has a 'proven track record of protecting livestock and the
> environment'"

I don't see how a cyanide bomb intended to kill wild animals protects the
environment. Those wolves are native species and part of the environment.
Killing them is hurting the environment, definitionally. And given that these
bombs don't strategically kill invasive species and are just as if not more
likely to kill native species, then I don't see any reasonable claim that
these are protecting the environment.

This is simply another case of regulatory capture where the government is
helping the special interests that are farmers.

~~~
JCharante
Right? This wouldn't be a problem if we didn't have livestock. Animal
agriculture is an unnecessary barbaric practice that has no business in our
modern world when we have better options accessible to us.

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qppo
I want to know what happened to the jackasses that thought it was a good idea
to lay mines with poison gas on public lands

~~~
josephcsible
They use poison powder, not poison gas, which has at least somewhat reduced
potential for collateral damage.

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mattxxx
Headline-crafting has gotten out of control; headlines like this really play
off people's anxiety/insecurity, just to get a view.

~~~
hedora
I’d call it a “cyanide mine” not “bomb”. How is it legal to place one 350ft
from a house without notifying anyone?!?

Do they maintain a map of these things so they can be properly disposed of?

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aaron695
> The secretive government agency planting 'cyanide bombs' across the US

There's some sort of secret organisation putting arsenic packages around
cities as well.

Might be attempts from the illuminati to kill off the homeless or your pet
dogs or something, it's hard to know.

Any old kid could pick one up and eat them, nothing is registered on any web
sites of locations.

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coolspot
Previous discussions:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=cyanide](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=cyanide)

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vorpalhex
Has the Guardian gotten worse or were they never that good to start with?

Wildlife services is hardly a secret branch, they are also the folks who
airdrop rabies vaccine in remote areas. Yes they do take game from helicopter
as part of their population management. Hogs in particular are frequently
managed by helicopter since they like to hang out on private property.

The M44 device does have it's issues but calling it a bomb is a gross misise
of words - it's a spring loaded aerosol. It's typically used for pack
management especially with hogs. Most of the concern with them is downstream
of the food chain - a nontargeted animal eats a poisoned carcass, dies, and
then something eats those remains.

~~~
slac
Perhaps they should be better at informing nearby citizens of the presence of
these devices so that kids do not get injured.

~~~
vorpalhex
They do, with signs, weekly in-place checks, and usually knocking the property
owners front door first.

[PDF WARNING]
[https://www.aphis.usda.gov/publications/wildlife_damage/fs-m...](https://www.aphis.usda.gov/publications/wildlife_damage/fs-m44-device.pdf)

~~~
hedora
That sign is 6 inches tall, and it is neither OSHA nor ANSI style:

[https://www.safetysign.com/help/h55/osha-
format](https://www.safetysign.com/help/h55/osha-format)

Also, the text explaining what it does is so small you’d have to put your head
near the device to read it.

~~~
josephcsible
> Also, the text explaining what it does is so small you’d have to put your
> head near the device to read it.

So? It's not a proximity trigger. It won't activate unless you pull on the
bait.

~~~
yencabulator
How close to cyanide do you want to be when you read it's cyanide?

These things sound quite deadly, and the regulations around them sound very
lax / practically not enforced.

~~~
josephcsible
Ethylene glycol is a deadly poison too, and people get close to it on a
regular basis.

~~~
kjs3
False Equivalence to the white courtesy phone...False Equivalence...

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bwb
Scary!

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catalogia
I remember reading about this stuff years ago, it's public knowledge. You
could call this government agency obscure, but I wouldn't say it's secretive.

~~~
everfree
I consider myself somewhat well-read, and I hadn't heard of these.

~~~
catalogia
As I said, it's fair to call it obscure. But calling it secretive is just
sensationalist.

