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Who intentionally set off fireworks under a blackbird roost in Beebe, Arkansas on New Year's Eve killing at least 200 birds? In some warped homage to last New Year's when at least 5,000 blackbirds perished?
Do the killers think their prank is funny or
that the birds are nothing but pests?
The killers have a lot in common with the US
Department of Agriculture, In 2009, the USDA's Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Service (APHIS) says it poisoned 489,444 red-winged blackbirds in
Texas alone and 461,669 in Louisiana. It also shot 4,217 blackbirds in
California, 2,246 in North Dakota and 1,063 in Oregon according to its posted
records.
That is in addition to the starlings, crows,
ravens, doves, geese, owls (yes owls) hawks, pigeons, ducks, larks, woodpeckers
and coots the government kills to benefit ranchers, farmers and other private
interests. And squirrels, rabbits, badgers, bobcats, beavers, woodchucks,
coyotes, opossums, raccoons and mountain lions.
The he-men at the Wildlife Service also shot 29
great blue herons, 820 cattle egrets and 115 white-faced ibises in 2009,
despite the known dangers of approaching shore birds.
It's hard to know which is worse: government
agencies like APHIS, Louisiana State University and the Louisiana Department of
Agriculture and Forestry helping private rice farmers and landowners with our
tax dollars. Or the scorched earth baiting of their rice fields with poison
"until blackbird populations are depleted," as LSU's Rice Research
Station News puts it.
APHIS even uses caged red-winged blackbirds as decoys to attract wild ones
says Audubon magazine and "pre-baits" an area with unpoisoned food to
ensure the most takers.
Nor does the government's blackbird poison only kill blackbirds.
"APHIS makes sure that the poisoned banquet
is especially tempting for wildlife by laying the food out in the spring. This
attracts birds and other wildlife because food sources, especially insects, are
limited in early spring," says the National Audubon Society. "The
poisoned rice also looks very tasty because the birds are migrating. The
poisoned rice is a ready buffet for any bird to eat, but especially those who
are tired and hungry from flying."
To you blackbirds; to us, pests by Martha Rosenberg
The government used the chemical DRC-1339 to poison the over million blackbirds it killed in 2009, including in Louisiana. The avicide, called Starlicide causes "irreversible kidney and heart damage" says APHIS. "A quiet and apparent painless death normally occurs 1-3 days following ingestion," writes an APHIS spokesman on the site, probably secure in the fact that his death won't take three days.
In 2010, Illinois wildlife officials poisoned 90 tons of goldfish, gizzard and shad in the Chicago Sanitary and Shipping Canal with the chemical Rotenone, which suffocates fish, to support the sport fishing industry. A year earlier they poisoned tens of thousands of goldfish, koi, bass, crappie, catfish and sunfish/bluegill hybrids in Chicago's Lincoln Park to rehab the pond.
Whether killing fish to save a pond or blackbirds to help farmers, government wildlife officials honor neither the "public" or "trust" in the Public Trust Doctrine they are sworn to. And wildlife has a lot more to fear than New Year's Eve.
