July 15, 2020 — The Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 yesterday to approve an agreement and a work and financial plan with Wildlife Services for another year, at close to $160,000.
In December of last year, the board approved the final Environmental Impact Review for the Mendocino County Integrated Wildlife Damage Management Program and approved a five-year agreement between the county and the agency, as well as the annual plan, which will come before the board each year.
The program was suspended in 2014 when wildlife groups sued the county over the lack of an EIR. In February of this year, Project Coyote and the Mendocino Nonlethal Wildlife Alliance filed another lawsuit against the county over the new EIR, calling it “fundamentally flawed.” The groups have always campaigned against lethal wildlife management strategies, and circulated a petition to urge the supervisors to end the contract with the agency, which is part of the US Department of Agriculture.
But yesterday Derek Milsaps, the California North District Supervisor of Wildlife Services, told the board that while the agency does use lethal methods, the majority of its work involves non lethal approaches, including thousands of “technical assists.”
“In Mendocino County alone, 93% of all bear calls are non-lethal technical assists,” he said during his presentation; “95% of all mountain lion calls are non-technical assists.”
Lethal methods include shooting and trapping, including snares, though steel jawed foothold traps were banned in California in 1998, along with M44 sodium cyanide ejectors. Milsaps told the board his agency works closely with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which may issue a depredation permit after certain findings about the target animal have been made. But Don Lipmanson, the lawyer for Project Coyote, believes the predators have been falsely accused. “The conflict arises from human entry into wildlife habitat,” he said. “Native wildlife habitat, and human transformation of the ecosystems. In other words...the contract misattributes the responsibility to the predators, rather than recognizing the responsibility of humans.”
Milsaps told the board his agency protects property and livestock, and that it takes an active role in controlling diseases, especially in wild pigs. “Another growing thing in our program as well is disease surveillance and monitoring. Mendocino County, in the last 20 has done 989 disease samples, and half of those samples were from feral swine. The biggest concern is that feral swine is increasing in the US, which is, they estimate, around five million animals, which can transmit diseases to humans, livestock, pets and wildlife.”
But Camilla Fox, the Executive Director of Project Coyote, said there are plenty of other agencies that can handle diseased animals. For example, “ The two most common species that carry rabies in California are bats and skunks, and any rabid animal situation is handled by the California Department of Public Health, often in conjunction with a local animal control department. Furthermore, if a wild animal poses a public safety hazard, for example if a bear or a mountain lion appears in a populated area, the CDFW is the responsible responding agency, often with the assistance of local law enforcement. A county contract with Wildlife Services is not needed to address these situations.”
Supervisor Ted Williams had several suggestions for limited funds, saying, “I want to support ranchers and give them tools that are effective, that will allow them to stay sustainable. But it looks like almost a million-dollar handout to one sector. And this is at a time that I don’t believe we give a dollar to ambulance service and we don’t have covid testing on the coast during a pandemic at any reasonable level and we cite lack of funds, we can’t do it, we don’t have money, but here we are, spending almost a million dollars over the life of the contract.
Devon Jones, the Executive Director of the Mendocino County Farm Bureau, shared statistics with the board on the numbers of depredation permits that have been issued in the past several years, including 421 for wild pigs since 2016. “People are part of the environment,” she said. “Respect for wildlife and proactive measures are required. However, people aren’t going away. So there will continue to be interactions and conflicts, and at times, lethal methods are going to be necessary.”
But Carol Misseldine, of the Mendocino Nonlethal Wildlife Alliance, doesn’t think the science supports that view. “Scientific studies on this issue continue to reach the same conclusions that the University of Wisconsin study found, which I shared with you,” she told the board. “Which is, and I quote: ‘non-lethal methods are more effective than lethal methods in preventing carnivore predation on livestock. At least two lethal methods, including government culling and regulated public hunting, were followed by increases in predation on livestock.’”
Supervisor John McCowen did not find the literature persuasive, saying, “Certain studies were recommended to me, and I did read those. One of them was a review of literature on the topic, and another one was a study of various farms in Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, and these are the kinds of things that are cited when people say, the scientific evidence is in, and non-lethal methods are more effective, and more cost-effective.”
The board approved this year’s work and financial plan with Wildlife Services, with Supervisors Williams and John Haschak dissenting. Agriculture Commissioner Jim Donnelly said it would cost the county $160,000 this year, rather than the $182,000 that was cited, because of expected delays in hiring a trapper.