Some people say I’m too negative about the USDA. I’m always berating them for their vicious beaver/woodpecker/goose-killing ways. Maybe I should be more balanced. Say something nice about them for a change.

Okay.

Once I was attending a lecture in graduate school and, bored beyond belief, I glanced down at my sweater sleeve. It happened to have tiny flecks of color in the wool and the random pattern was fun to look at – or more fun than the lecture anyway. This time, though, the tiny flecks were moving.

I left class in a panic, certain I had such a bad case of head lice that they were dropping off in droves. I drove straight to the daycare where I’d worked forever knowing they could help. They fearlessly sat me down and checked my head. Then said, nope not lice.

I bug bombed the house. Threw out the sweater and shivered my way onwards. I didn’t see any more crawlies. I thought I was safe. Chalk it up to experience.

Next week I went back to class. Same teacher, same room, (practically the same lecture). I glanced down to keep from falling asleep and saw MORE CRAWLING!!!!!!!

This time I caught a few of the escapees. Someone told me to bring them to USDA in Concord to figure out what they were. They soberly took my tiny bugs. Dropped them in a vial of fermaldehyde and shipped to Sacramento. It was surreal, but oddly comforting. 2 weeks later the report came back.

As it happened they were Acacia Psyllids, a problem for the trees but not harmful to us or sweaters, and I had to walk through Acacia trees to get to class. And that, ladies and gentleman, is a good use of the USDA.

Now lets talk about this next story.

Seems there was an apartment complex in South Carolina that sported some recovering geese, injured by fishing line and beloved by residents. (Well, SOME of the residents).

Taxpayers subsidizing wild life extermination program, probe shows

By MARY LOU SIMMS

The trucks pulled up at dawn. PollyAnna, a year-old disabled goose whose wing feathers were growing back, was asleep when the trappers approached. Not long after, Debbie Dangerfield, a real estate agent and 16-year resident of River’s Edge, a sprawling residential complex in Charleston, S.C., was leaving her condo to check on PollyAnna when she noticed she was missing. Also gone were a dozen or so geese parents and their young.

The crippled geese also seemed to have vanished: Nibbles, a young gander with a damaged wing; Limp, so-named because of an upper-leg injury, and VeeVee, the victim of fishing-line entrapment.

As Dangerfield approached the entrance to the complex, she noticed two USDA trucks pulling away from the guard house and broke into a dead run, reaching the vehicles as they slowed to accommodate speed bumps. She begged the drivers to pull over, peering inside one of the trucks as they did.

There she saw PollyAnna crammed into a crate with half a dozen other geese.

Ouch. That seems harsh. I know you have jobs to do and all, saving airways from disabled geese or whatever, but just FYI, you probably shouldn’t ever take wildlife with a name. Don’t worry. They weren’t completely heartless. They did give her the “Sophie’s Goose Choice”

Eventually the police came and the River’s Edge management agreed to let her keep one bird.

Mary Lou’s EXCELLENT article follows goose-killing in New Jersey, Alabama, Mississippi and Oregon. It’s a grim shocking look at a fairly invisible outrage. She describes a freedom of Information Act-forced disclosure documenting countless wildlife killed by the USDA. (Including beavers of course.) Since the article is paid for by a private DC grant, and she works for the McClatchy Tribune (Same as the reporter I spoke with before the festival) I have to imagine that this data is making the rounds and going to generate a few similar stories in the future.

Good. It’s about time everyone realized what Unfeeling Sadists Do to Animals.

I excitedly opened my July issue of Mt Diablo Audubon Society Newsletter: The Quail to check on whether the beaver article I had written had been included. I wanted to spend the morning talking about the delightful connections I had made with audubon since speaking there, but I found that the same issue is plastered with horrific woodpecker headlines that I simply can’t avoid discussing this morning. The beaver story is a bright spot on a very dark horizon, and one that deserves our attention.

When we last visited the story I had told you that the mutuals in question had seen the end of days on their 50 bird-killing permit, and had decided to seek an additional permit, this one from the Department of Agriculture. This allowed the “trapping for scientific research” of 20 additional birds. I had thought this meant they would just be quietly killed off sight, but I had not truly considered the terrifying options in depth.

Audubon pursued the issue with USDA and received back two responses weighed down by their own great respect for their own very high ethical standards. One was from the US Department of Agriculture National Wildlife Services Research Center (NWRC). The other was from the Washington DC and the head of the Ornothological Council who wanted to further defend the very respectable credentials of NWRC scientists. Apparently the very highest ethical standards were applied to the pointless but ethical capture, ethical interstate transport, ethical detention and ethical interference of our acorn woodpeckers. After which time they will be ethically euthanized, or, if they’re lucky, spared to participate in other highly ethical experiments for years to come.

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=BbgyppGqBgg]

The fate of a score of cheerful acorn woodpeckers from Rossmoor reads like this:

NWRC scientists, with the help of WS Operations field specialists, live-captured 20 acorn woodpeckers from the Rossmoor community in late May. Capture was delayed until after documented egg laying dates by acorn woodpeckers in this region. Care was also taken to not remove birds observed feeding young or sitting on eggs. The birds arrived at the NWRC in Fort Collins, Colorado, on May 27.

“Care was taken not to remove birds observed feeding young or sitting on eggs.” Hey, I feel better already. I understand, science couldn’t possibly have waited until after nesting season was over, because that would have been after the May 31st permit period ran out and then those Rossmoor victims would be left alone with those vicious animals. Surely any ornithologist worth his Sibleys can tell two identical woodpeckers apart once they’ve moved off the nest to feed? Anyway, I’m sure in the midst of the complex nesting structure of polyandrous acorn woodpeckers where several females care for the young at once a highly ethical scientist would know instantly who was the mommy. You didn’t say how they were actually trapped, but I’m sure you used ethical silk netting or painless blow dart sedatives or something like that. After their capture they won an all expense paid trip to Colorado! What lucky birds.

The birds will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of several deterrent calls for use in a nonlethal electronic deterrent device. The device is meant to prevent damage to utility poles and other structures. The birds are housed in both indoor and outdoor aviaries and are under the care of our Attending Veterinarian. Our research is conducted under strict scientific protocols and quality assurance standards. Results from this study, as well as others conducted by NWRC scientists, are published in peer-reviewed journals, usually within 1-2 years of a study’s completion.

Anyone feel like a biscuit? Not the stodgy kind mind you, I’m talking about the crisp horrific guantanamo acronymn Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT) referring to the team of top military ethical physicians and ethical psychologists on hand to assist and guide the ethical interrogations. I know intimately how much controversy psychologists participating in these teams caused within the APA, so I can only imagine there are a few ornithologists out there that don’t feel cozy with the NWRC either. At any rate, we are told that supporters of these noble birds should be comforted by the fact that they will play an important role in key research. Like this study which has demonstrated that these electrical devices don’t work to deter pileated woodpeckers. It concludes that more research is needed, and any ethiclal scientist can tell you that in order to make sure the method is a complete failure in every way it must be painstakingly applied to all species of woodpecker.

Under provisions of our 2009 California Scientific Collecting Permit (#SCP-10561), we will euthanize the birds upon the completion of the study. Since these woodpeckers are housed in outdoor aviaries, we cannot ensure their isolation from other species or pathogens during the course of back into the wild is not allowed under our permit. If possible, we will use these birds in additional studies, thus alleviating capture of additional birds from the wild.

Of course the captured birds cannot be released into the wild after we finished tampering with them. They might carry pathogens from all the diseases they picked up during our ethical care. Never mind that we spent government money to fly them 1000 miles when we could have studied the woodpeckers in our own backyard. We cannot possibly return them to their native lands because Rossmoor doesn’t want them. Much better to just kill them, but look on the bright side, we might use them again before their deaths!

The Department of Agriculture has as little interest in (or respect for) wildlife as the older gentleman I watched this week trying to use his walking stick to club golden native trout while they spawned in an alpine stream. They both lack the pragmatic understanding of a sportsman, and are miles away from the complex inter-relations of a naturalist. When the man saw me watching in horror he explained “The damn things won’t bite!” Obviously failing to take the bait made them a prime candidate for clubbing. Through gritted teeth it was explained that the fish weren’t eating because they were busy making more fish for him to catch next year, and he grumbled off into the woods, deeply affronted at the inconvenience.

This is the USDA, whose first instinct is to destroy, and whose response to enforced inhibition of any kind is to grumble off into the woods and complain about the obstruction. They’ve shown equal sensitivity to beavers in Elk Grove, the woodpeckers in Rossmoor, the coyotes in Nevada, and waterfowl in Wisconsin. At their worst they are bullies and at their best they are ill-informed rhinoceroses trying to pick wildflowers. Take this example, where an APHIS coyote hunter, Gary Strader, was recently fired for reporting the illegal shooting of mountain lions by his buddies from a helicopter. Mind you, not fired for participating in the shooting, but fired for caring about it. These are the people taking care of those acorn woodpeckers.

Do I sound bitter?