‘The hired gun of the livestock industry’: Wildlife Services, a federal agency, kills more than 100,000 animals in Washington every year

They shot them down from the sky.

It happened two winters ago in Adams County, but the federal government won’t say where. A pilot and gunner did it from a plane while flying low over wheat stubble on the Palouse or some desolate expanse in the Scablands.

The winds would have been calm. It was cold that day, around freezing, according to National Weather Service records. They could have started early in the morning, when wildlife is out and about and easy for a sharpshooter to see.

Exactly who wanted the animals dead and how much the killing cost is a mystery, but on Feb. 24, 2021, a little-known agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture killed 67 coyotes to protect cattlemen’s herds. Read More…