In March of 2017, a 14-year-old Idaho boy, named Canyon Mansfield, was hiking with his pet Lab a few hundred yards behind his home when he encountered a small metal tube sticking out of the ground. Not knowing what it was, Canyon reached over to pick it up. The device discharged its contents of sodium cyanide grazing Canyon and hitting his Lab. Canyon suffered severe injuries and had to watch as his beloved pet convulsed to death next to him.

Canyon and his dog had been sprayed by an M-44, "Cyanide Bomb." A device resembling a lawn sprinkler that is smeared with scented bait to attract predators. When an animal chews or pulls on the device, a spray of sodium cyanide is shot into the animal's mouth, causing a violent and painful death.

The Cyanide Bomb was placed, on public land, by Wildlife Services, an opaque and mostly unaccountable division of the United States Department of Agriculture. Every year, the agency kills millions of animals to protect private ranching and agriculture interests.

According to Wildlife Services, approximately 33,000 animals were killed with Cyanide Bombs over the past three years, including hundreds of nontarget animals such as dogs, bears, raccoons, opossums, and skunks. Those numbers, especially the nontarget animal deaths, are almost certainly significantly underreported as numerous insiders have accused the agency of poor record-keeping and an entrenched "shoot, shovel and shut up" mentality.

In response to growing public outrage over these indiscriminate chemical landmines, the EPA initially withdrew an interim decision to reauthorize the use of the devices in August 2019. Tragically, the EPA just announced that they would be reauthorizing their use with minor improvements to warning signs and setback requirements from houses and roads.

Reaction from conservation organizations was swift and justifiably harsh. Cathy Liss, president of the Animal Welfare Institute, said in a statement: "The EPA's minor revisions do little to reduce the risks that sodium cyanide bombs pose to people, fail to address risks to wildlife, including endangered species, and make clear the agency is prioritizing livestock interest over human safety and the environment."

I have been actively involved in the conservation movement for almost 40 years and have learned that most controversies are complicated, nuanced, and contain legitimate concerns on both sides. The use of Cyanide Bombs is not one of those controversies. There is no justification for planting lethal, indiscriminate and inhumane landmines, on public or private land, and then just walking away.

Unfortunately, the use of Cyanide Bombs is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Wildlife Service's War on Wildlife. According to its report, in 2018 alone, Wildlife Services killed over 1.5 million native animals (excluding another 1.1 million deemed invasive). The totals included 68,000 coyotes, 3,300 red and grey foxes, 357 wolves, 515,000 red-winged blackbirds (they eat grain), 10,000 cormorants (they feed at fish farms), 537 river otters, 375 mountain lion, 1002 bobcats, and 338 bears. Approximately 2,700 were nontarget animals.

Even more appalling, there have been countless reports of how this "rogue" agency has violated state and federal law while engaging in systemic animal cruelty including the deliberate torturing and killing of stray dogs with Cyanide Bombs, using hunting dogs to tear apart animals caught in leghold traps, illegal use of poisons, neck snares and killing coyote pups in their dens with phosphorous bombs. In his book, This Land, Christopher Ketcham, a public lands journalist for Harper's, describes the agency like this: "True to its mandate, Wildlife Services kills anything under the sun perceived as a threat to stockmen, deploying an arsenal of poisons, traps and aerial gunships at a cost of tens of millions of dollars a year."

In sum, taxpayers are funding a $100 million-dollar federal agency, which brutally kills millions of native animals every year, on public lands, mainly for the benefit of private ranching and farming interests.

Think about that for a minute.

In fairness, Wildlife Services performs many legitimate functions, including efforts to thwart bird strikes at airports, removing diseased animals, and controlling destructive species such as feral swine. But that does not excuse their shocking assault on native wildlife.

Perhaps the most significant outrage is that there is little scientific evidence that killing predators work to protect livestock. A study published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment found the practice was mostly ineffective. For example, from 1947 to 1954, we killed an estimated 6.5 million coyotes by carpet-bombing western lands with poison. Today we kill an estimated 500,000 coyotes a year. The result is that the population and distribution of coyotes are more significant than ever as coyotes expand reproduction in response to the indiscriminate killing.

Conversely, independent scientists have produced numerous studies that show that nonlethal means of predator control (guard animals, fencing, visual deterrents) are more effective in preventing livestock deaths than lethal means.

What is undeniable is that predators are a crucial component of a healthy ecosystem, and it's time that taxpayers stopped funding these barbaric, 19th-century eradication programs, for the benefit of private interests, in favor of a more humane, science-based approach to protecting livestock and agriculture.