5e) Discussion and Possible Action Including Approval of Retroactive Cooperative Service Agreement (CSA) with the United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services (APHIS), and Wildlife Services (WS), in the Amount of $189,556 to Provide a Work and Financial Plan for the Mendocino County Integrated Wildlife Damage Management Program, for the Period of July 1, 2021 through June 30, 2022
(Sponsor: Agriculture)
Please renew the agreement with Wildlife Services.
In the past 9 months I have lost 22 ewes. 11 of those ewes were pregnant during lambing season. Before the first 6 kills I was already using non-lethal methods to try to deter predators. I then worked with CDFW to implement more non-lethal methods which didn’t work and continued to lose more. CDFW then issued me a depredation permit which was never used and has since expired.
I continue to use non-lethal methods and practices because it is my only option at this time. I know I will lose more livestock.
After speaking with CDFW Biologists they agreed non-lethal methods don’t always work.
At this point I have lost 50% of my family’s flock, soon I probably won’t have any more to lose and will have to give up raising sheep.
Non-lethal methods do not correct an overpopulation of predators.
Raising livestock is not always a money making business, it’s a way of life passed down from generation to generation. We need all the help we can get sometimes when dealing with situations we cannot control. Please renew the service agreement so ranchers have another option to protect our livestock.
Thank you,
Steven Spacek
Mendocino County Resident
Please terminate the county’s contract with Wildlife Services. This program is based on outdated science, is inefficient, and cruel in its methods.
I would like my tax dollars to go towards something that actually benefits this beautiful area and not a handful of ranchers and farmers.
As a resident of Mendocino County, I am opposed to any agreement with the USDA Wildlife Services that allows them to continue trapping and slaughtering animals that are indigenous to this area and a vital part of the ecosystem. Ironically, it is human developments and activities that have made an incursion into these animals' natural habitat which often forces them to alter their natural behaviors. Please research better and more humane ways to keep domestic animals safe from predators.
The purpose of this comment is to respectfully urge the Board of Supervisors to reject the Cooperative Service Agreement with the USDA—Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services and Wildlife Services. Please do not renew the Wildlife Services contract. I don’t want my taxpayer dollars being used to kill coyotes or other wildlife for ranchers when there are viable and effective alternatives with fewer impacts and more humane results. I would like Mendocino County to provide a non-lethal exclusion service and education to protect both property and wildlife. Ranchers and wildlife both deserve respect and fair treatment. Thank you
Hello, I am a Mendocino County resident telling you that I am strongly opposed to any renewal of the Wildlife Services Contract.
I do not want taxpayers dollars being used to kill coyotes for ranchers. I would like the county to provide non lethal exclusion services
and education to protect property and wildlife. I care about Mendocino Wildlife. Please terminate this Wildlife Services Contract and
do what is right . Thank you.
There is really only one legitimate reason for there to be a Wildlife Services trapper in Mendocino County and that is to execute depredation permits issued by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. CDFW only issues depredation permits for two species, mountain lions and bears, and then, only if the property owner can demonstrate to a Game Warden that they have tried non-lethal means to protect their property.
From 1997 to 2017, Wildlife Services killed on average 9 mountain lions and 13 black bears a year in Mendocino County. The State of California contracts with Wildlife Services to provide trappers to execute these depredation permits. Between 2017 and 2020 when the County suspended its contract with Wildlife Services pending an Environmental Impact Report, notorious Wildlife Services trapper Chris Brennan was still here to execute depredation permits.
Basically, Mendocino County’s contract with Wildlife Services is for trappers to kill all the other smaller animals that mess with peoples’ property like bobcats, foxes, raccoons, skunks and, by far and away the most persecuted animal of all, coyotes, killed at the behest of ranchers. Killing wildlife in this way is not only cruel and inhumane, it is completely ineffective at protecting peoples’ property. Doris Duncan of Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue has a lot of experience dealing with human/wildlife conflicts, and she has told this board that if you don’t properly exclude an animal from access to your property, killing an offending animal will only lead to another animal moving into the territory.
Paying Wildlife Services to kill these wonderful wild animals that so enrich our lives here in Mendocino County is an ineffective and unconscionable expenditure of scarce taxpayer dollars. I urge this board not to renew the County’s $189,556 contract with Wildlife Services, and to terminate it at the earliest possible date.
I also urge this board to contract with a wildlife exclusion service that can educate county residents on non-lethal means of protecting their property and also help them set up exclusion devices. Wildlife exclusion is now considered the best management practice by wildlife experts and it is the direction that forward thinking wildlife managers are headed. It’s time for Mendocino County to enter the 21st century of wildlife management.
Thank you for your time and for doing the right thing by Mendocino County’s residents and wildlife.
I am submitting this comment, as a resident of Mendocino County, to respectfully request that the Board of Supervisors not approve the Cooperative Service Agreement with Wildlife Services and instead approve a 90-day notice to terminate the contract. I believe that tax revenue should instead be used to fund a program that employs non-lethal solutions (e.g., exclusion, deterrence, etc.) and educational services in order to effectively promote and protect both human and wildlife interests.
As a resident of Redwood Valley, I am writing to respectfully request that the Board of Supervisors not approve the Cooperative Service Agreement with Wildlife Services and instead approve a 90-day notice to terminate the contract. I believe that tax revenue should instead be used to fund a program that employs non-lethal solutions (e.g., exclusion, deterrence, etc.) and educational services in order to effectively promote and protect both human and wildlife interests.
The purpose of this comment is to respectfully urge the Board of Supervisors to reject the Cooperative Service Agreement with the USDA—Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services and Wildlife Services. There are myriad non-lethal methods to safely mitigate human - wildlife conflict (and any damage and/or loss caused as a result) that have been successfully implemented in other counties and which should be utilized here in Mendocino County. We cannot move into rural areas where wildlife have existed since time immemorial, expect to not encounter them, and then kill them when we do.
I am a resident of Redwood Valley, California. The purpose of this eComment is to ask that the Board not approve the Cooperative Service Agreement with the USDA—Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services and Wildlife Services, which, by its own terms, is intended to assist both individuals and governmental agencies in “protecting human resources . . . from damage caused by . . . nuisance wildlife.” CSA, p. 1. Instead, the Board ought to consider contracting with a locally operated, non-lethal wildlife exclusion and deterrence program in order to minimize conflicts with wildlife and any resulting damage or loss. It is not in the public interest, for example, “to see cattle die because of [wildlife] or to see [wildlife] die because of cattle” Ingfei Chen, New Yorker, "The Persuasive Power of the Wolf Lady," https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/the-persuasive-power-of-the-wolf-lady (Jul. 19, 2019). Significantly, other California counties have employed successful non-lethal solutions that have utilized deterrence, education, and other non-lethal measures in order to effectively mitigate human-wildlife conflict and damage or loss.
Additionally, with record temperatures in Mendocino County and elsewhere and historic wildfires causing an increase in human-wildlife conflict as wildlife is displaced and flees its habitat due to record-setting wildfires in Northern California, I believe that we owe a special duty to wildlife to utilize non-lethal strategies since human activity and CO2 emissions have precipitated such climate change and human-wildlife conflict.
For the foregoing reasons, I strongly oppose approval of the CSA and respectfully ask that the Board consider other contracts that utilize non-lethal wildlife management solutions.
My name is Linda McVarish and I am a resident of Mendocino County. I oppose the renewal of this contract to kill wild animals for the benefit of ranchers. There are other, more humane ways to discourage them that we should explore. Thank you.
I respectfully request that you end the contract with Wildlife Services. For 3 years prior to the 2020 reinstatement of Mendocino County’s contract with Wildlife Services we coexisted with wildlife without paying tax dollars to destroy wild animals. Please remember, during that 3 year hiatus, the public retained the legal right to shoot an animal that injured their livestock and citizens could get a depredation permit from the California Department of Fish and Game after showing that nonlethal attempts were made to protect their livestock.
Supervisor Mulheren said it best when running for office:“The lethal predator control methods that the USDA Wildlife Service employs are ineffective and outdated. As Supervisor, I will vote to terminate the County’s contract with Wildlife Services and instead use that $170,000 in tax dollars on education about and implementation of non-lethal techniques.
Wildlife serve as a vital part of our eco-system. Renewal of this contract to kill would now cost taxpayers $189,000 when a non-lethal wildlife exclusion program would cost taxpayers far less; save lives, protect the delicate balance of our eco-system and allow us to join a worldwide moral, ethical and humane movement to manage and protect wildlife.
My name is Richard Ettelson and I'm a resident here in Mendocino county.
I strongly object to your renewing the $189k USDA contract to subsidize irresponsible ranching techniques that require killing wildlife because their unwilling to use alternative non-lethal methods to protect their stock. These methods are the price of doing business, it is not a public responsibility to maximize their profits. If the only way they can continue to do business is by using public funding perhaps they should find alternative propositions where they can invest their money.
Public funding should be used to develop methods for coexisting with our wildlife instead of hiring killers at the public expense to do the job for them. Predators are a legitimate issue for ranchers and they already have the right to legally shoot wild animals caught in the act of molesting or injuring their livestock. They can also get depredation permits from CDFW.
The money saved by cancelling this contract can then be partially used for public education efforts applying non-lethal methods to address wildlife conflicts.
I hope you'll consider my objections to this unnecessary expenditure of public funds and cancel the USDA contract.
Please do not renew this contract. Our taxes should be used to help educate and inform people on how to protect their domestic animals and livestock from wild animals. They were here before us and deserve to live. It is our responsibility to learn how to do that and the County should help.
Anna Marie Stenberg
9649109
I ask you to terminate the contract because of the leghold traps and lethal methods used the US Ag Dept and Wildlife Services. Humane trapping is possible. Re the killing of predators that take livestock: there are decades of research documenting that predator reproduction and adjustment of territories always negates any temporary benefit; let ranchers better utilize protective guardian animals (dogs and donkeys) rather than rely on our money to fund unnecessary killing of predators that are a vital part of our ecosystem.
Please discontinue the use of Wildlife Services. They have a long history of being too quick to resorting to killing, and using cruel methods to do it: Their cyanide bombs "temporarily blinded a child and killed three family dogs in separate incidents in Idaho and Wyoming." They use other poisons, including for "denning," the practice of killing burrowing animals in their dens (or removing them from their dens and killing them above ground), aerial gunning of coyotes in some states, and cruel traps and snares. This is where the quote is from: https://wildearthguardians.org/wildlife-conservation/end-the-war-on-wildlife/tools-of-cruelty/. That website has a lot more information about Wildlife Services and non-lethal management as an alternative. Supporting ranchers by "managing" wildlife is a questionable use of public funds to begin with, but if you must pay for it with our tax dollars, please consider that most people would prefer that humane methods be used, with the first effort being one to attempt coexistence with natural predators.
I strongly urge your rejection of this agreement for lethal wildlife management services. How many years have we been doing this now in this county? How many of our beautiful wildlife have died just because of careless, lazy ranchers who lost a couple of calves or goats and found it easier to just kill everything around them rather than fix their fencing? It's disgusting, it really is, the number of bears, bobcats, mountain lions, coyotes who have been ruthlessly murdered in Mendocino County when you look at the numbers. These are creatures we're supposed to be sharing this land with, not killing the second we see them running across ranch land or "threatening" livestock that are allowed to free-range on PUBLIC land mind you. Yes, don't forget, the fat cows are grazing on public land, and wildlife that are living on PUBLIC land are often killed because the cows grazing on PUBLIC land might lose a calf or two. How outrageous is that? Stop the murder.
On top of that, the CEQA document that was completed last year for this program is flawed and inadequate, and puts the county in a position of financial liability if anyone were to look too closely at it, pick it apart, and sue. It's not a smart document on which to base a 5-year contract at a time of mass extinction and wildlife death, when folks are looking to protect the meager amount of biodiversity that's left in this world and are willing to sue in order to achieve that. Even I, no expert biologist or lawyer, got no further than 5 pages into it and could tell how shallow the work was and how easily someone could utilize California's complicated CEQA laws to bring a suit against the County.
Enough is enough. It is time to stop the slaughter, please say no to a lethal IWDM program. Look for non-lethal alternatives instead.
Dear Board of Supervisors,
Please renew the agreement with Wildlife Services.
In the past 9 months I have lost 22 ewes. 11 of those ewes were pregnant during lambing season. Before the first 6 kills I was already using non-lethal methods to try to deter predators. I then worked with CDFW to implement more non-lethal methods which didn’t work and continued to lose more. CDFW then issued me a depredation permit which was never used and has since expired.
I continue to use non-lethal methods and practices because it is my only option at this time. I know I will lose more livestock.
After speaking with CDFW Biologists they agreed non-lethal methods don’t always work.
At this point I have lost 50% of my family’s flock, soon I probably won’t have any more to lose and will have to give up raising sheep.
Non-lethal methods do not correct an overpopulation of predators.
Raising livestock is not always a money making business, it’s a way of life passed down from generation to generation. We need all the help we can get sometimes when dealing with situations we cannot control. Please renew the service agreement so ranchers have another option to protect our livestock.
Thank you,
Steven Spacek
Mendocino County Resident
Please terminate the county’s contract with Wildlife Services. This program is based on outdated science, is inefficient, and cruel in its methods.
I would like my tax dollars to go towards something that actually benefits this beautiful area and not a handful of ranchers and farmers.
As a resident of Mendocino County, I am opposed to any agreement with the USDA Wildlife Services that allows them to continue trapping and slaughtering animals that are indigenous to this area and a vital part of the ecosystem. Ironically, it is human developments and activities that have made an incursion into these animals' natural habitat which often forces them to alter their natural behaviors. Please research better and more humane ways to keep domestic animals safe from predators.
The purpose of this comment is to respectfully urge the Board of Supervisors to reject the Cooperative Service Agreement with the USDA—Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services and Wildlife Services. Please do not renew the Wildlife Services contract. I don’t want my taxpayer dollars being used to kill coyotes or other wildlife for ranchers when there are viable and effective alternatives with fewer impacts and more humane results. I would like Mendocino County to provide a non-lethal exclusion service and education to protect both property and wildlife. Ranchers and wildlife both deserve respect and fair treatment. Thank you
Hello, I am a Mendocino County resident telling you that I am strongly opposed to any renewal of the Wildlife Services Contract.
I do not want taxpayers dollars being used to kill coyotes for ranchers. I would like the county to provide non lethal exclusion services
and education to protect property and wildlife. I care about Mendocino Wildlife. Please terminate this Wildlife Services Contract and
do what is right . Thank you.
From: Jon Spitz, Laytonville
To: Mendocino County Board of Supervisors
There is really only one legitimate reason for there to be a Wildlife Services trapper in Mendocino County and that is to execute depredation permits issued by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. CDFW only issues depredation permits for two species, mountain lions and bears, and then, only if the property owner can demonstrate to a Game Warden that they have tried non-lethal means to protect their property.
From 1997 to 2017, Wildlife Services killed on average 9 mountain lions and 13 black bears a year in Mendocino County. The State of California contracts with Wildlife Services to provide trappers to execute these depredation permits. Between 2017 and 2020 when the County suspended its contract with Wildlife Services pending an Environmental Impact Report, notorious Wildlife Services trapper Chris Brennan was still here to execute depredation permits.
Basically, Mendocino County’s contract with Wildlife Services is for trappers to kill all the other smaller animals that mess with peoples’ property like bobcats, foxes, raccoons, skunks and, by far and away the most persecuted animal of all, coyotes, killed at the behest of ranchers. Killing wildlife in this way is not only cruel and inhumane, it is completely ineffective at protecting peoples’ property. Doris Duncan of Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue has a lot of experience dealing with human/wildlife conflicts, and she has told this board that if you don’t properly exclude an animal from access to your property, killing an offending animal will only lead to another animal moving into the territory.
Paying Wildlife Services to kill these wonderful wild animals that so enrich our lives here in Mendocino County is an ineffective and unconscionable expenditure of scarce taxpayer dollars. I urge this board not to renew the County’s $189,556 contract with Wildlife Services, and to terminate it at the earliest possible date.
I also urge this board to contract with a wildlife exclusion service that can educate county residents on non-lethal means of protecting their property and also help them set up exclusion devices. Wildlife exclusion is now considered the best management practice by wildlife experts and it is the direction that forward thinking wildlife managers are headed. It’s time for Mendocino County to enter the 21st century of wildlife management.
Thank you for your time and for doing the right thing by Mendocino County’s residents and wildlife.
I am submitting this comment, as a resident of Mendocino County, to respectfully request that the Board of Supervisors not approve the Cooperative Service Agreement with Wildlife Services and instead approve a 90-day notice to terminate the contract. I believe that tax revenue should instead be used to fund a program that employs non-lethal solutions (e.g., exclusion, deterrence, etc.) and educational services in order to effectively promote and protect both human and wildlife interests.
As a resident of Redwood Valley, I am writing to respectfully request that the Board of Supervisors not approve the Cooperative Service Agreement with Wildlife Services and instead approve a 90-day notice to terminate the contract. I believe that tax revenue should instead be used to fund a program that employs non-lethal solutions (e.g., exclusion, deterrence, etc.) and educational services in order to effectively promote and protect both human and wildlife interests.
The purpose of this comment is to respectfully urge the Board of Supervisors to reject the Cooperative Service Agreement with the USDA—Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services and Wildlife Services. There are myriad non-lethal methods to safely mitigate human - wildlife conflict (and any damage and/or loss caused as a result) that have been successfully implemented in other counties and which should be utilized here in Mendocino County. We cannot move into rural areas where wildlife have existed since time immemorial, expect to not encounter them, and then kill them when we do.
I am a resident of Redwood Valley, California. The purpose of this eComment is to ask that the Board not approve the Cooperative Service Agreement with the USDA—Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services and Wildlife Services, which, by its own terms, is intended to assist both individuals and governmental agencies in “protecting human resources . . . from damage caused by . . . nuisance wildlife.” CSA, p. 1. Instead, the Board ought to consider contracting with a locally operated, non-lethal wildlife exclusion and deterrence program in order to minimize conflicts with wildlife and any resulting damage or loss. It is not in the public interest, for example, “to see cattle die because of [wildlife] or to see [wildlife] die because of cattle” Ingfei Chen, New Yorker, "The Persuasive Power of the Wolf Lady," https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/the-persuasive-power-of-the-wolf-lady (Jul. 19, 2019). Significantly, other California counties have employed successful non-lethal solutions that have utilized deterrence, education, and other non-lethal measures in order to effectively mitigate human-wildlife conflict and damage or loss.
Additionally, with record temperatures in Mendocino County and elsewhere and historic wildfires causing an increase in human-wildlife conflict as wildlife is displaced and flees its habitat due to record-setting wildfires in Northern California, I believe that we owe a special duty to wildlife to utilize non-lethal strategies since human activity and CO2 emissions have precipitated such climate change and human-wildlife conflict.
For the foregoing reasons, I strongly oppose approval of the CSA and respectfully ask that the Board consider other contracts that utilize non-lethal wildlife management solutions.
My name is Linda McVarish and I am a resident of Mendocino County. I oppose the renewal of this contract to kill wild animals for the benefit of ranchers. There are other, more humane ways to discourage them that we should explore. Thank you.
I respectfully request that you end the contract with Wildlife Services. For 3 years prior to the 2020 reinstatement of Mendocino County’s contract with Wildlife Services we coexisted with wildlife without paying tax dollars to destroy wild animals. Please remember, during that 3 year hiatus, the public retained the legal right to shoot an animal that injured their livestock and citizens could get a depredation permit from the California Department of Fish and Game after showing that nonlethal attempts were made to protect their livestock.
Supervisor Mulheren said it best when running for office:“The lethal predator control methods that the USDA Wildlife Service employs are ineffective and outdated. As Supervisor, I will vote to terminate the County’s contract with Wildlife Services and instead use that $170,000 in tax dollars on education about and implementation of non-lethal techniques.
Wildlife serve as a vital part of our eco-system. Renewal of this contract to kill would now cost taxpayers $189,000 when a non-lethal wildlife exclusion program would cost taxpayers far less; save lives, protect the delicate balance of our eco-system and allow us to join a worldwide moral, ethical and humane movement to manage and protect wildlife.
Carol R Lillis
Albion
My name is Richard Ettelson and I'm a resident here in Mendocino county.
I strongly object to your renewing the $189k USDA contract to subsidize irresponsible ranching techniques that require killing wildlife because their unwilling to use alternative non-lethal methods to protect their stock. These methods are the price of doing business, it is not a public responsibility to maximize their profits. If the only way they can continue to do business is by using public funding perhaps they should find alternative propositions where they can invest their money.
Public funding should be used to develop methods for coexisting with our wildlife instead of hiring killers at the public expense to do the job for them. Predators are a legitimate issue for ranchers and they already have the right to legally shoot wild animals caught in the act of molesting or injuring their livestock. They can also get depredation permits from CDFW.
The money saved by cancelling this contract can then be partially used for public education efforts applying non-lethal methods to address wildlife conflicts.
I hope you'll consider my objections to this unnecessary expenditure of public funds and cancel the USDA contract.
Please do not renew this contract. Our taxes should be used to help educate and inform people on how to protect their domestic animals and livestock from wild animals. They were here before us and deserve to live. It is our responsibility to learn how to do that and the County should help.
Anna Marie Stenberg
9649109
I ask you to terminate the contract because of the leghold traps and lethal methods used the US Ag Dept and Wildlife Services. Humane trapping is possible. Re the killing of predators that take livestock: there are decades of research documenting that predator reproduction and adjustment of territories always negates any temporary benefit; let ranchers better utilize protective guardian animals (dogs and donkeys) rather than rely on our money to fund unnecessary killing of predators that are a vital part of our ecosystem.
Please discontinue the use of Wildlife Services. They have a long history of being too quick to resorting to killing, and using cruel methods to do it: Their cyanide bombs "temporarily blinded a child and killed three family dogs in separate incidents in Idaho and Wyoming." They use other poisons, including for "denning," the practice of killing burrowing animals in their dens (or removing them from their dens and killing them above ground), aerial gunning of coyotes in some states, and cruel traps and snares. This is where the quote is from: https://wildearthguardians.org/wildlife-conservation/end-the-war-on-wildlife/tools-of-cruelty/. That website has a lot more information about Wildlife Services and non-lethal management as an alternative. Supporting ranchers by "managing" wildlife is a questionable use of public funds to begin with, but if you must pay for it with our tax dollars, please consider that most people would prefer that humane methods be used, with the first effort being one to attempt coexistence with natural predators.
I strongly urge your rejection of this agreement for lethal wildlife management services. How many years have we been doing this now in this county? How many of our beautiful wildlife have died just because of careless, lazy ranchers who lost a couple of calves or goats and found it easier to just kill everything around them rather than fix their fencing? It's disgusting, it really is, the number of bears, bobcats, mountain lions, coyotes who have been ruthlessly murdered in Mendocino County when you look at the numbers. These are creatures we're supposed to be sharing this land with, not killing the second we see them running across ranch land or "threatening" livestock that are allowed to free-range on PUBLIC land mind you. Yes, don't forget, the fat cows are grazing on public land, and wildlife that are living on PUBLIC land are often killed because the cows grazing on PUBLIC land might lose a calf or two. How outrageous is that? Stop the murder.
On top of that, the CEQA document that was completed last year for this program is flawed and inadequate, and puts the county in a position of financial liability if anyone were to look too closely at it, pick it apart, and sue. It's not a smart document on which to base a 5-year contract at a time of mass extinction and wildlife death, when folks are looking to protect the meager amount of biodiversity that's left in this world and are willing to sue in order to achieve that. Even I, no expert biologist or lawyer, got no further than 5 pages into it and could tell how shallow the work was and how easily someone could utilize California's complicated CEQA laws to bring a suit against the County.
Enough is enough. It is time to stop the slaughter, please say no to a lethal IWDM program. Look for non-lethal alternatives instead.