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Show Qoison-laced baits found SALT LAKE CITY A hundred state and federal wildlife law enforcement officers offi-cers found several poison-laced baits when they probed remote areas of Utah and Colorado this week in a massive air and land operation to halt the illegal use of pesticides to kill coyotes, eagles and other predators. 'Hie law enforcement operation opera-tion was a cooperative effort involving in-volving the Utah Division of QVildlife Resources, the U.S. ish and Wildlife Service and I the Bureau of Land Manage-ment. Manage-ment. "Not only is the use of pesticides against predators illegal, il-legal, but the practice is killing hundreds of other birds and animals," said Galen Buter-baugh Buter-baugh of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Officers flew numerous low level searches looking for poisoned bait stations and dead animals who fed on the bait. The airborne officers maintained radio contact with response teams on the ground, calling them in to investigate suspect areas. "Until now, some ranchers have felt safe putting out poison because of the remoteness of their lands," said Utah WildUfe Resources director Tim Provan. "But if these aerial surveys, combined with undercover operations, monetary awards for information leading to arrests, and active involvement by concerned con-cerned citizens of the farming and ranching communities, are effective, anyone considering using us-ing illegal poisons to control predators should think twice." "The poisoning of wildlife in the West is widely accepted and poisons are fairly easy to come by," said Terry Grosz, chief of law enforcement in eight Western states. Documented deaths by poisons of hundreds of bald and gold eagles, coyotes, foxes, badgers and domestic dogs and cats have occurred in numerous states. |