Animal Damage Control Program

Efforts to protect livestock from predators, mainly coyotes, constitute the major activity of the Agriculture Department's Animal Damage Control Program. In 1994, more than 100,000 predators were killed by the program's field personnel. GAO found that Agriculture field personnel in California, Nevada, Texas, and Wyoming used lethal methods in essentially all instances to control livestock predators. Agriculture's written policies and procedures call for field personnel to give preference to the use of nonlethal methods when practical and effective. However, according to program officials, this aspect of written guidance does not apply to the control of livestock predators. These officials said that in controlling livestock predators, nonlethal methods, such as fencing and the use of herders and guard dogs, are more appropriately used by ranchers, have limited effectiveness, and are impractical for field personnel to use.

GAO found that: (1) ADC field personnel in 4 western states use lethal methods to control livestock predators despite written USDA policies and procedures giving preference to the use of nonlethal control methods where practical and effective; (2) ADC officials believe that the written guidance does not apply to controlling livestock predators, since nonlethal methods such as fencing and guard dogs are more appropriately used by livestock operators, have limited effectiveness, and are not practical for field personnel to use; and (3) although most of the operators requesting ADC assistance have already implemented nonlethal control methods, they are still losing livestock.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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