THE AUDUBON BULLETIN h) 
SHEEP INDUSTRY CHARGED WITH 
“DRENCHING WEST IN POISON” 
Powerful wool-growing interests aided by federal government bureaucrats 
are drenching the American West with deadly poisons, a major article in 
the August issue of Reader’s Digest has charged. The incredibly destructive 
campaign has brought several wild-animal species to the edge of extinc- 
tion and is even threatening human life and health, says author Jack Olsen. 
Citing eye-witness reports, Olsen shows that in attempting to protect 
their industry by wiping out predators, the sheepmen, often abetted by 
field trappers of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, have violated the law 
by spreading poison on public lands. They have also resorted to such 
deceptions as placing sheep wool in the stomachs of trapped wild animals 
to “prove” that a high percentage of bears and coyotes are sheep killers. 
Using modern equipment — planes, trail bikes, snowmobiles and pickup 
trucks — the poisoners cover the land with such lethal chemicals as cyanide, 
arsenic, strychnine and thallium. One of the most widely-used poisons 
is sodium fluoroacetate, or ‘1080,’”’ one ounce of which is toxic enough to 
wipe out 20,000 coyotes — or 200 humans. 
In one case kistory cited by Olsen, a Colorado hunting guide discovered 
that 1080 had been used to lace sheep carcasses as bait for predators. Twice 
in two weeks the trapper saw snow cover the carcasses, then melt into a 
nearby stream — from which it might eventually reach human consumers. 
So powerful are the sheepmen, says Olsen, that legislation aimed at control 
of the poisoning invariably goes down to defeat, as do some legislators 
who oppose the formidable wool-growers lobby. When one Montana state 
legislator introduced a bill that would merely have required the U.S. Fish 
and Wildlife Service to OBEY ITS OWN POISONING REGULATIONS, 
the Montana Wool Growers Association immediately mounted a successful 
campaign to defeat the bill. 
Ironically, says Olsen, there is evidence that the frenzied efforts to 
wipe out predators may actually he having an opposite effect. Colorado 
naturalist Alfred Etter asserts: “Where we have starved the coyote, indis- 
criminately killing its food supply, we have uniformly encountered in- 
creasing reports of predation. By keeping the coyote population harassed 
and in a constant state of flux, we disrupt his territorial habits and make 
him, in effect, into a different animal — desperate, itinerant, a potential 
sheep killer. But if he had been left undisturbed, we would probably 
never have heard from him. The same applies to other predators.” 
The poisoning has devastated some of America’s once-great wildlife 
species, says Olsen. “There are broad areas in California where the coyote 
has been completely eliminated. Black bears and foxes are gone in some 
areas. The kit fox, a master controller of rodents, has vanished from 
thousands of square miles of the prairie. The black-footed ferret is about 
to flicker out as a species. One of the very few surviving California condors 
fell to 1080-treated grain. Even the mountain lion, officially listed as an 
endangered species, is specifically and mercilessly being killed.” 
Can the slaughter be stopped? “If there is a logical point of attack,” 
writes Olsen, “it would seem to be at the poisoning programs on govern- 
ment land.” So far, neither state legislatures nor the United States Congress 
have paid much attention to the problem. Concerned citizens, writing to 
their state and federal representatives, could help bring about a constructive 
change in attitude. 
