It’s rare for a family pet to survive a close encounter with one of the deadly predator control devices set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services program. In fact, over the past few years, I’ve shared several heart-breaking stories about dogs like Bea, a young American Brittany spaniel, who, in May 2008 suffered a terrifying, excruciating death during a hiking trip on public land in Utah, when she sniffed and licked a sheep carcass that had been laced with highly toxic Compound 1080 poison. And just this past December, I told you about a border collie in Oregon named Maggie who was strangled after being caught in a body-gripping kill trap set by Wildlife Services just 20 feet from her family’s property line. Bea, Maggie and countless other animals have suffered and died as a result of this agency’s outdated approach to solving wildlife conflicts and its indiscriminate killing and maiming of non-target species.
Bella narrowly survived an encounter with a snare.
Photo: Robert Norie
Fortunately for a beautiful husky named Bella and her owner, forester Robert Norie, her encounter with a snare set by federal agents did not end in death. She survived the ordeal, but as you will read, Bella still paid a horrible price when she came across these landmines of the natural world largely financed by our tax dollars.
In August 2010, while accompanying her owner on a trip to conduct a tree survey in Boise National Forest in Idaho, Bella wandered into a snare set for wolves by Wildlife Services and nearly died after struggling in the trap for more than eight hours. When Norie found her, Bella’s whole body was hopelessly tangled in the wire snare. She was caked with blood and had almost completely chewed off her right hind leg in a futile attempt to free herself from the cable. Norie and his coworkers managed to release Bella from the snare, and despite being in a remote area, Norie was able to get Bella to a veterinarian in time to save her life, but not her leg. Norie also suffered blood poisoning and had to spend four days in the hospital for treatment from a bite inflicted by an injured and terrified Bella while he was working to cut the cable away from her body.
While Bella survived the ordeal thanks to the heroic efforts of her devoted family, others like her are much less fortunate—left to languish in these traps for days, if not weeks, before finally succumbing to their injuries, dehydration, starvation or exposure.
Apparently, such is the case at Oregon State University where we have just learned that for several years now, Wildlife Services has been using the same types of cruel, indiscriminate snares that maimed Bella to injure and kill animals who wander into them near the school’s sheep farm. According to eyewitness reports from a family whose property lies adjacent to the sheep farm, deer fawns, raccoons and coyotes are routinely captured and left to suffer for days, if not weeks, in snares set by Wildlife Services along the farm’s fence line. The property owner says that one day she found a dead coyote who “had completely wrapped itself in and out of the wire fence in a struggle to get free. The other hind foot was missing entirely. I later learned that undoubtedly this coyote had formerly been caught in another trapping device and had chewed its foot off in order to escape.” On another day, she found “a live raccoon dangling on the fence, caught by the rear leg in the same type of snare trap as the coyote. This raccoon had similarly woven itself through the fence, trying to escape the snare's unyielding grip. I took video and photos of the struggling raccoon that had haplessly gotten caught in a snare set to catch another animal.”
Please send a polite message to Edward Ray, the president of OSU, asking him to suspend Wildlife Services' indiscriminate and inhumane trapping practices at the school, along with its contract, until an independent and public review is completed.
This tragedy is compounded by archaic state regulations that allow trappers as many as 30 days to check traps set for certain types of traps, similar to the one that nearly suffocated and killed Kiera, a Wheaten terrier, just 10 days ago while walking along the Metolius River in Oregon. It’s high time the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission adopt new rules to prevent animals from languishing interminably in these cruel and barbaric devices.
The federal program, too, is in need of reform. Wildlife Services has been killing animals for more than 80 years, using inhumane and indiscriminate methods, catching endangered species and family pets in the crossfire, with taxpayers footing a large share of the bill. It’s time for our government to do better, and find a new way forward.
