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Contents : www.kansascity.com 08/18/2011 Taxpayers subsidizing wild life extermination program probe shows 8/19/11 11:00 AM Back to web version Friday Aug 19 2011 Posted on Thu Aug. 18 2011 Taxpayers subsidizing wild life extermination program probe shows By MARY LOU SIMMS McClatchy-Tribune News Service The trucks pulled up at dawn. PollyAnna a year-old disabled goose whose wing feathers were growing back was asleep when the trappers approached. Not long after Debbie Dangerfield a real estate agent and 16-year resident of River's Edge a sprawling residential complex in Charleston S.C. was leaving her condo to check on PollyAnna when she noticed she was missing. Also gone were a dozen or so geese parents and their young. The crippled geese also seemed to have vanished: Nibbles a young gander with a damaged wing Limp sonamed because of an upper-leg injury and VeeVee the victim of fishing-line entrapment. As Dangerfield approached the entrance to the complex she noticed two USDA trucks pulling away from the guard house and broke into a dead run reaching the vehicles as they slowed to accommodate speed bumps. She begged the drivers to pull over peering inside one of the trucks as they did. There she saw PollyAnna crammed into a crate with half a dozen other geese. "The geese were frantic " Dangerfield recalls. "They had been shoved into crates stacked like pancakes defecating on each other. I was begging and pleading for them to at least let me have the few crippled geese we had rescued." Eventually the police came and the River's Edge management agreed to let her keep one bird. "They were just trying to appease me " she says "to keep me quiet so other residents wouldn't hear the commotion and decide to investigate." PollyAnna now shares the backyard of a rehabilitation center with a crippled goose named Angel occasionally serving as a good-will ambassador for her species. The story is one of many. In Delafield Wis. lifelong resident Jim Pfeil tried to keep the feds from gassing an aging crippled goose named Stumpy this summer offering to match the $6 500 slaughter fee if city officials would allow an animal protection group to manage the geese instead. A few years ago Pfeil rushed Stumpy to a wildlife center where veterinarians removed a bullet through the neck. Recently he watched in tears as workers crowded Stumpy into a crate with her mate and four or five other geese. "I almost wish I hadn't seen it it was so awful " he says. "But I feel compelled to tell her story." He says the roundup lasted four hours from 8 a.m. to noon and that some of the geese seemed already dead by the time they were trucked to an undisclosed location. Mayor Ed McAleer declined to discuss the event but says the meat was sent to a food pantry. And in Brooklyn's Prospect Park residents set up a vigilante-style "goose watch" to protect a trio of newborns dubbed "the miracle birds " hatched when volunteers treating eggs (a form of birth control) missed a nest. Wildlife Services is the little-known branch of the USDA deemed largely responsible for geese slaughters coast to coast. Buried under several layers of bureaucracy Wildlife Services prefers to stay under the radar. However a copy of a 2010 report obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request indicates that U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing a $126.5 million program that exterminates more than 4 million wild animals annually including thousands of geese. http://www.kansascity.com/2011/08/18/v-print/3083674/taxpayers-subsidizing-wild-life.html Page 1 of 5 www.kansascity.com 08/18/2011 Taxpayers subsidizing wild life extermination program probe shows 8/19/11 11:00 AM The agency also has come under fire for its use of sodium cyanide a poison placed in devices called M-44's which its literature says is used to control coyotes wild dogs and foxes preying on livestock. "Many animals killed by M-44's are non-targeted species such as raccoons bears and household pets " says Brooks Fahy of Predator Defense a national conservation group who condemned the agency's use of poisons on a CNN HLN Jane Velez-Mitchell show in March. "There are years of outmoded thinking " he says "and leaders from an old regime that can't seem to transition to newer more humane ways of managing wildlife." Carol Bannerman a Wildlife Services media specialist declined to respond. Wildlife Services is charged with overseeing the nation's wildlife conflicts involving agricultural and property damage and human health and safety. Geese are blamed for creating a "nuisance" by defecating on municipal lawns and golf courses. "We understand the need to manage geese populations " says John Hadidian suburban wildlife director of The Humane Society of the United States the nation's largest animal protection group. "It's the approach that is controversial. Capturing geese in a way that is deemed terrorizing is very disturbing to people." Geese are rounded up and gas

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