Time to Ban Cruel, Indiscriminate “Cyanide Bombs”
Foxes, bears, dogs and other other animals are dying
It’s a scene that plays out thousands of times of year in Texas and across the country: a coyote one day, a fox or a raccoon the next. The hungry animal catches a whiff of something tasty and goes to investigate. There, on the ground, it finds it — a small cylinder driven into the soil.
You and I might not even notice it. But for the animal, the smell of bait is irresistible. It takes an exploratory bite — and receives a sudden blast of sodium cyanide to the mouth, leading to an agonizing death.
These are not isolated incidents. These “cyanide bomb” traps, or M-44s, are scattered on public and private lands across the country. In Texas, where most M-44 deaths occur, cyanide traps killed 4,251 coyotes last year and more than 700 “nontarget” animals in the last five years.
Yet despite near-universal rejection from the public and the efforts of my organization, the Center for Biological Diversity, and others, the Trump administration stubbornly refuses to ban these dangerous and counterproductive traps.
The thin rationale for these devices is that ranchers need them to control coyote populations. And M-44s are a favorite tool of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services — a wildlife killing program.
But beyond their cruelty, M-44s are indiscriminate killers.
According to an analysis of Wildlife Services data by the Center, more than 200 of last year’s M-44 victims were killed accidentally, including foxes, opossums and a bear. M-44s also temporarily blinded a child and killed three family dogs in two incidents in Idaho and Wyoming in 2017.
The public certainly doesn’t want them. After the EPA issued its proposed interim decision renewing sodium cyanide registration, 99.9% of the 20,000 people who commented called for a ban.
The EPA then offered a glimmer of hope in mid-August when it withdrew its interim decision to reauthorize sodium cyanide use in these traps.
But that relief was short lived. Rather than ban the cruel devices, the EPA just instituted modest restrictions and some signage requirements. This won’t prevent wildlife from dying with a mouthful of cyanide. And it will do little to prevent family dogs or even children from stumbling across these traps in the future — with potentially tragic results.
Fortunately, some progress has been made: In 2017, Wildlife Services issued a moratorium on using the traps on public lands in Idaho, and this year Oregon banned their use altogether. In response to lawsuits, Wildlife Services agreed to a temporary halt to M-44 use in Colorado, while it agreed to ban them on more than 10 million acres of public land in Wyoming. In response to another lawsuit, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed to analyze impacts of M-44s on endangered wildlife by the end of 2021.
But M-44s can’t be used safely anywhere. We need a permanent, nationwide ban to safeguard people, pets and imperiled wildlife from these inhumane and indiscriminate devices.
Further, Wildlife Services must revise its outdated reliance on killing predators. Recent studies have shown that lethal control of predators actually tends to increase livestock deaths. Killing nearly half a million coyotes a year has done nothing to stop predation on livestock or the animal’s expansion throughout the nation.
The American people — and our wildlife — deserve to be safe from poison on and around public lands. It’s time to stop filling our wild places with cruel and unnecessary M-44 deathtraps.
Collette Adkins is the carnivore conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity.
