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Show Government Studying Coyote Control repellents, and aversive conditioning," he said. Copies of the Western Regional Coordinating Committee's response to the predator control research compiled by the government are available by writing to Dr. Bowns, Southern Utah State College, Cedar City, Utah 84720. Bowns has been closely-tied closely-tied with the government predation study, having been appointed by Secretary Andrus to a 13-member, 180-day, 180-day, national Animal Damage Control Policy Study Advisory Committee last year. The advisory committee reviewed the study produced by the Fish and Wildlife Service and helped validate the use and interpretation of data included in this government study on predator control. a secretarial decision in regards to predator control will be made. "There are eight alternatives alter-natives included in the option op-tion paper," Bowns said. "Some of these the Western Regional Coordinating Committee supports, others it doesn't." "Basically, we support the alternative to increase utilization of all current control techniques, and oppose the alternative to request compensation to help ranchers absorb their losses from predation, as an alternate to predator control. con-trol. "We reject the alternatives alter-natives of having no federal animal damage control program, emphasis on non-lethal non-lethal control, and the alternative which would limit control to aerial gunning, ground shooting, and M-44's,"Bowns said. "The committee feels that more work should be done on the use of toxicants, including in-cluding compound 1080, and that further evaluation be made of the toxic collar," the SUSC-USU professor said. "We also feel the need for more research and more data on damage assessment, and the need for more research on non-lethal methods such as attractants, More selective and more effective methods are needed to control coyote predation, but control should come about through a well integrated program rather than through an attempt at population control, a Utah expert on, predation has testified in Washington, D.C. James E. Bowns! Associate Professor of Range Science at Southern Utah State Collge and Utah State University, recently testified at a Department of the Interior hearing on predator control. He spoke in behalf of the Western Regional Coordinating Committee (WRCC-26), Evaluating Management of Predation in Relation to Domestic Animals, which he chairs. The committee includes representatives of the Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, state and private universities who have been studying the predator problem since 1972. Doyle Matthews, dean of the College of Agriculture and director of the Agricultural Experiment Station at USU, is the teachnical advisor. "Basically, we do not support reduction of coyote populations westwide," Bowns explained, "We do support the concept of damage control rather than predator population reduction. With the techniques now available, we simply can not accomplish ac-complish population control." con-trol." In Washington, Bowns presented W.RCC-26's response to a 240-page Draft Environmental Impact Statement recently completed com-pleted by the Fish and Wildlife Service as part of a federal study on animal damage control. The environmental impact statement was produced with another report, Predator Damage in the West: A Study of Coyote Management Alternatives, which was published by the Fish and Wildlife Service in December as part of the same government study. "The coyote management alternatives is the most comprehensive, most up-to-date study on coyote depredation ever written," Dr. Bowns said. Copies of the study are available by writing to the Department of the Interior, Washington, DC. The study of coyote depredation, the environmental en-vironmental impact statement, and an option paper derived from the study, will be presented to Secretary of the Interior Cedcil D. Andrus sometime this spring, following which |